Four:

....this has happened maybe 6 times now over a 9 month period, each time being told they didn’t have the readings etc and there was no record of me giving them...

Not an uncommon customer service experience unfortunately.

To deal with that you need to "set-up" British Gas in a way that they cannot escape from. One technique is to raise an official complaint strictly in accordance with the British Gas complaints procedure. I strongly recommend submitting the complaint in writing using "Signed For" delivery. Unless you are very confident do not discuss the complaint by phone.

Another technique is to make a Subject Access Request requiring provision of all the data they hold about you, including correspondence, bills, file notes, call logs and call tapes. This will cost you £10, British Gas an administrative fortune. They must provide the information within 40 days and are quite likely to shoot themselves in the foot. When you receive the information try to drive a wedge through what they have done to you using the information provided.

Finally, and this is also for the benefit of others, always take an actual meter reading on entry. In fact the supplier should either take a reading or ask you to provide one. Whenever you receive a bill containing an estimated reading ensure it is close to actual reading on the meter.

All suppliers make it easy to submit a customer reading whenever a bill contains an estimated reading. If on the first occasion when you queried the £400 owing, the British Gas adviser did not suggest you provide a customer reading, that is a very specific thing to complain about, because that is where the problem started.

An actual meter reading is absolute proof of use, however bills are sometimes erroneous for a number of reasons, especially where there has been manual intervention which I suspect in this case. However I cannot comment further because in a long post there is not a single meter reading or bill calculation example or mention of the size of your direct debit. Neither is there any indication whether you are dealing with gas only, electricity only or both.

Four:

Has anyone got any advice. I think maybe the only real option is to talk to Citizen’s advice now and see where I stand.

You should get together all the information that you can about the matter, preferably including the meter readings and the dates of phone calls, and put this in a letter to British Gas, keeping a copy yourself. Things are likely to drag on for a while but if everything is recorded in a letter there shouldn't be problems about losing readings or BG losing records of phone calls.

ConsumerFocus can be helpful and are worth contacting. I've found the Energy Ombudsman to be a waste of space as they are funded by the utility companies. ConsumerFocus is government funded.

http://www.consumerfocus.org.uk/

Hi,

I wonder whether anyone can help me with this. I am at the end of my tether, I'm fed up, stressed out with dealing with them and completely at a loss of what to do.

I moved into my current rented address in June 2008 with a friend of mine, the estate agents supplied our details to British Gas before we moved in. After having been there a couple of months, we set up a direct debit to pay monthly, this continued for a little while, after 6 months or so, we got a massive estimated bill through.

My then housemate phones up and asked why this was so huge (from memory I think it was £400 or so owed to them). He was told that it was just due to seasonal use and that it would go back down, so we left it like that.

My housemate then moved out in September, and another friend moved in.I cancelled the BG account with my old housemate and opened a new one with my new Housemate.

he trouble starts when I get the final bill through for the first joint account. Despite the fact that the account had only been running for around a year and a half, the final bill said we owed them £650+ obviously I questioned this and was told that there was no start meter reading or end meter reading on the account and that there was a meter exchange down as being carried out in July (after we moved in).

Firstly, I gave them the correct meter readings and then advised that the meter had not been exchange since we lived there and that in fact the meter had been exchanged in the Febuary before we moved in, according to a sticker on the front of the meter. I gave them all the details off of this. Anyway, to cut a very long story short, I then got the same bill through 4 weeks later,I phoned them up again and was told they didn’t have the actual start and end meter readings. Gave them those again and the meter swap details.

Another 4 weeks or so, same bill, followed by threatening letters, phoned them again, asked them to stop sending these as the account is still under investigation, they stopped for a while, started again, phoned again, still estimated readings and wrong meter exchange.

This has happened maybe 6 times now over a 9 month period, each time being told they didn’t have the readings etc and there was no record of me giving them.

It’s now gotten to the point where I don’t know what the readings were anymore, I phoned up again rather angry and was told by this agent that she was very sorry for all the hassle etc and she would sort it. I went through all the information on what had happened, and it turns out there is even more confusion on the account, the dates for everything seemed wrong, the readings were still estimates etc, etc. The agent said she would take a weekly reading so took current reading, phoned back a week later, took a reading and said would do another bill based on this, with some compensation for the hassle that has been caused etc.

I have just heard from her again, now they’re saying £499. All based on estimates as they have nothing else to base it on, no compensation mentioned this time round or anything like that. I tired to explain again that I’m not sure how they expect me to just accept an expensive entirely estimated bill, and was met with a blank response of “Well me and my colleague spent 2 hours going through this account”. Well if it was done properly one of the first 5 or 6 times it would have been sorted ages ago and I would have nothing to question. I don’t know anymore whether ANY of the information they are using is correct. I have asked her to send me a full email detailing how they worked all of this out, dates, estimated reading, price per unit, credits to the account etc. I’m still waiting for this.

I really am at a loose end, rest assured this is the worst customer service I have ever experienced in my life, I will not voluntarily use British Gas again, and I’m going to call the landlady to see if she has any objection to me changing suppliers with my current housemate. But again, that means I’ll have to close the account. I’m completely stuck on what to do, the current Customer service agent now seems to have lost that understanding attitude that she had last week and is basically saying she can’t do anything else, and she doesn’t seem to understand where I’m coming from.

Has anyone got any advice. I think maybe the only real option is to talk to Citizen’s advice now and see where I stand.

FYI the account was open for about a year and a half. Detached 2 bed bungalow, heating off in the summer, off most of spring and early autumn, we only tend to heat the living room anyway. Very new central heating system, and the only thing in the house that uses Gas is the Heating and Hot water. No Gas hobs etc.