celso:

It's good that you are prepared to excercise your right to customer choice. As well as by price, a Consumer Focus accredited comparison website allows ranking by service rating.

I just wanted to comment about the Direct Debit Guarantee. You are right to speculate what is the position if the supplier sent notification but you did not receive it, perhaps because it was "lost in post" (or more likely never sent) or the email address was wrong.

Actually it doesn't matter a hoot. The Direct Debit Guarantee requires an "immediate" refund by the bank in the applicable circumstances, usually no or inadequate notice of a changed payment amount or date. It is sufficient that you assert that no notice was received. The bank must then make an "immediate" refund. Any investigation (probably none) takes place later by the Originator, not the bank. The cashier's terminal in most (all?) banks has a workflow to arrange the "immediate" refund. Yes, you may have to be firm, but be firm. If necessary turn it into a complaint against the bank.

Prior to British Gas informing me that they were no longer accepting Standing Order Payments I was on the most economic tariff and a Direc Tariff condition did not exist and the Standing Order has worked fine for 15 years in this house and over 30 years in previous properties.

In the interim I may pay a little more for my energy but I will have piece of mind that I am in control of my finances, in the meantime I am researching alternative suppliers with, as you puit it, better rated service.

The £400.00 calculation was a direct result of their incompetence and this information was conveyed in a letter informing me that they would recover this by direct debit and as a result increase my monthly payments. However, as I did not have a direct debit for British Gas to mess up the issue was sorted out very quickly but not without considerable inconvenience.

The Direct Debit protection only works if you receive the advice of their intentions in correspondence in a timly manner if at all. By their own admission, they had been trying to contact me by e-mail but without success because they had not recorded my e-mail address, whioch has not changed for 10 years, correctly.

I just think that British Gas are exercising their power as a large company and customer care, as you rightly point out come a very poor second if at all.

celso:

I have now informed British Gas that I want to return to a paper bill and I will pay at the Post Office. This should increase the amount of labour at British Gas and if enough peopel do this then there may be some more jobs going.

Fine. If British Gas accept that without change to either your tariff or discount then you are probably not on the most economic tariff as the most economic tariffs tend to be online tariffs and require (as a tariff condition) payment by Direct Debit.

There is a clue as to why that might be in your expectation of "this should increase the amount of labour".

In respect of your email being wrong, well customers also have a responsibility to manage the competence (or incompetence) of suppliers, and energy suppliers (overall) don't have a great record - as you recognise but haven't acted on by excercising your customer right to chose a better service rated supplier.

Perhaps you are closed to the consumer protection provided by the Direct Debit Guarantee. I agree a £400 direct debit would cause trouble for most people, however it is unlikely that a direct debit customer would have been subjected to a £400 direct debit. The account would have been reviewed, you would have been notified of the review outcome and the payments would have been adjusted to achieve account balance by the next review period. Or should be, supplier competence willing.

Your call.

For the last 15 years I have paid British Gas by Standing Order for both my Gas and Electricity. The account has never defaulted and has always ended in a Credit balance at the year end. Yesterday 9/8/2010 I received a telephone call from a representative of British Gas saying thet they will no longer accept payments by Standing Orde and wanted to convert my payment method to Direct Debit. I dislike Direct Debit because it gives the supplier total access to your account and once transactions have been implemented you have terrible trouble, especially with large companies, correcting their errors. During the conversation they checked my personal details on file to discover the reason I had not previously responded to them was because they had my e-mail address wrong. If they can't get this right then I felt justified in not allowing them access to my Bank Account. My Electricity consumption last year was under £30.00 per month so when I received a bill for £400.00 I comnplained and they argued that it was an actual meter reading and insisted that my consumption had risen. A re-read of the meter was going to cost me another £50.00 or they would monitor the consumption over 3 months to see if the meter was faulty. The meter was fitted during the previous September but their incompetent meter reader didnt read the card left by the installer which gave the reading at installation, which, as it turned out was the reason for the sudden jump in consumption. I took them a further 2 weeks to rectify their error but at least I hadnt paid the £400.00. If I had been on a direct Debit payment syatem with Britis Gas then the £400.00 DD would have caused me considerable trouble at the Bank.

I have now informed British Gas that I want to return to a paper bill and I will pay at the Post Office. This should increase the amount of labour at British Gas and if enough peopel do this then there may be some more jobs going.