I have an ongoing dispute with British Gas. It started in 2006 and related to incorrect opening meter regardings and account registration. I tried to resolve it by telephone but in January 2007 after many calls and much wasted time, I decided only to deal with it in writing by letter so that we had evidence of everything. My first letter received a reply saying they were sorry and were dealing with it. Since then I have written 20 recorded delivery letters and received no replies. The last letter was sent a couple of days ago. We have paid the charges for gas used but none of their spurious charges for letters and visits etc etc. However they haven't credited the monies we have sent them to our account, or rather it appears they may be running two accounts for us, one to receive the money and one for all the gas charges. This means one account is wildly in credit and the other one shows a balance owing to them of around £2500. They have a policy of not replying to letters. The eighteenth letter was sent to their registered office in Windsor. That resulted in a man from their dispute resolution office (Mr. M) contacting me by telephone. The interesting thing was the telephone message Mr. M left gave no number to return his call. I therefore wrote the nineteenth letter explaining what had happened and giving an email address as well. We received another telephone call message this time giving a number to return Mr. M's call. I returned his call but he wasn't available and I was able to leave a message with a lady in his office. I received no call back, whether he got the message and failed to return my call or whether he didn't get the message, none of us know. However I then got an email from Mr. M to which I replied stating he should get all the copy invoices together for our property, together with all the receipts from us and he should send us the same so we both had all the paperwork and we could work through this together and establish where things had gone wrong. The only reply I received was an "I am out of the office but will get back to you" reply by email. The next thing that happened was that we received a letter stating they were applying for a Warrant for Entry. One of my previous letters - maybe the 13th or 14th - clearly stated that in the event of their application for a warrant, I would like to attend court to refute their allegations. On receipt of their letter stating they had obtained a warrant, I telephoned them to establish in which court and on which date they had done so. It transpired it was on 12th April at Aldershot Magistrates Court. I then telephoned the Magistrates Court asking for a copy of the papers they had submitted when they made their application. These papers had been sent to the Portsmouth filing centre and the lady at Aldershot Magistrates Court has applied for them to be returned to her so she can provide me with a copy. She also gave my fax to their legal team because one of my questions was "How can I apply to have the warrant set aside in the case that British Gas had obained the Warrant of Entry on the basis of false information." Her answer which I got today was I have to apply for Judicial Review, which I don't think is right but I have to investigate it. My point here is that British Gas are outrightly negligent and anyone who claims that large organisations would never knowingly behave badly are just wrong. British Gas just doesn't know what it's doing. For example when I telephone, the person answering the call believes she or he can look at a screen and see everything which has gone on, on an account. But yet it's not all logged on there. Mr. M's contribution to those notes were that he had called twice and received no reply. So.... incompetence, poor systems and negligence. My experience of these large organisations in general is that they tend to shove people around to suit themselves. Only if you have some knowledge of the law and some determination, can you make them behave properly. In my case I shall have to take them ultimately to the Basingstoke County Court to get recompense for my time and trouble in dealing with their failure both to provide the level of service they claim to provide and to behave within the law. Some of you may say there is the Ombudsman and we should use him. The trouble is my experience of that is that it's just another third party brought into a dispute and what effect do they actually have on the behaviour of the companies they are meant to police? Surely by now someone at the Ombudsman would have cottoned on to the fact that British Gas's keeping of records of what's happened on an account is flawed? Anyone else have a good experience of British Gas replying to letters?