British Gas Complaints Soar
April 22, 2007 at 9:47 am
Since British Gas launched a new billing system last year, complaints about the company’s service have more than doubled, according to the independent electricity and gas energy watchdog. Dissatisfied customers have flooded Energywatch with tens of thousands of complains about disputed bills, call centre delays and poor customer service standards.
Speaking about the massive rise in complaints, the energy watchdog’s director of campaigns Adam Scorer said of the supplier “Their service has gone from bad to worse. Their inability to deal with customers’ problems is inexcusable.” Complaints reached 21,427 between October 2006 and March of this year, compared with 8,012 in the same period just a year earlier. Energywatch was contacted by a record 14,000 frustrated British Gas customers in March alone.
According to British Gas’s Managing Director Phil Bentley, problems began to arise when the company transferred the details of 16 million customers onto a new computer database last year. However, thousands of complaints have been made against a new billing system recently implemented which means that bills are estimated by computer instead of being calculated according to a meter reading. Energywatch states that the new system is over-estimating the costs to customers, who are receiving bills for greater amounts of gas or electricity than they are using. To make matters worse, when attempting to complain to the provider customers have been faced with a massive shortage of call centre staff, meaning long delays in customer service. In response to these problems, thousands of frustrated complaints have been made to Energywatch.
Bentley put the drastic rise in complaints down to inevitable “teething problems” with the new system, and spoke on behalf of British Gas: “”Obviously we apologise for the inconvenience and the stress. I understand what it’s like to get a bill that’s incorrect. We apologise to those customers and we’re working very hard to improve services.” The provider has reportedly employed an extra 800 frontline staff to cope with customer complaints, with the wait for customer service now averaging at 70 seconds.
Nevertheless, many critics are sceptical of improvement. Energy product manager of the online comparison service uSwitch, Geoff Slaughter stated scathingly “British Gas keeps telling us that it is turning a corner, but this seems to be one of the longest corners in history.” Adam Scorer spoke of British Gas’s reputation, stating that “the inability to treat their customers who have a genuine problem with their bills with the most basic level of customer service is what’s causing British Gas’s reputation, quite frankly, to be dragged through the mud.”
In response to the growing criticism of British Gas, MD Phil Bentley apologised on BBC radio, stating: “I’m on record as saying we will see significant improvements in service by summer.”
We were fooled by British Gas Homecare and thought that we’d get the sort of service promised in the adverts and so we have paid our £20 a month for 3 years. Yesterday our boiler broke down and we have no heating or hot water. We expected next day service or maybe Saturday at the latest. No, Monday was the earliest they could manage. They only do emergencies at the weekend, so not exactly the 24-7 they advertise then.
Their excuse for the 3 day wait. They get more call outs in the winter as systems break down more often! Surprise!
So, save your money and call out somebody when you need them.
Not complaining about the cost of my gas, however, for the second quarter I HAVEN’T HAD MY BILL AND I CAN’T ACCESS THE INTERNET SITE. How am I supposed to pay? DISGUSTING SERVICE, taking the public FOR A RIDE. I must take my custom elsewhere.
Received my gas bill which has more than trebled. I phoned BG to ask if I could pay half now and half next month and they said that if I do that I will have to pay £14 for doing it in installments. It does say on the bill if you have a problem paying then speak to them and they didn’t want to know. I am going to be changing my supplier.
British Gas is the worst company I have ever had to deal with. First off when you ring them, it takes several minutes to even get through to the correct department , there are so many messages to listen to and numbers to select and then you have to wait ages in a queue to speak to someone. I have had several problems with them the latest being that they have overestimated my final bill and despite me ringing to give them the correct reading (2 weeks ahead of scheduled direct debit date) they have gone ahead and taken an overcharged amount from my account anyway and are now telling me that when this happens no refunds can be made until issue has been resolved . What issue I phoned them with correct meter read on the day I received the bill and they assured me that it had been changed and a new bill would be sent!! Low and behold 2 weeks later and they take the incorrect amount and now they tell me no refund until we sort it. This is absolute nonsense, as far as I am concerned British Gas have overcharged me and will only refund my money when they see fit. If you were overcharged in a shop and went back to complain you would get your money back straightaway but not with British Gas.
I wouldn’t care if British Gas were giving away there products for free I still wouldn’t go back to them – horrendous company.
B.G. have just put up my monthly direct debit from £70 to £101 without any notice. Rang their 0800 number and was told they cannot reduce it by more than 10% ‘without authorisation’ (they can, however, seemingly increase it by 50% without even telling us!) – I have to contact their complaints dept, but have to ring a premium rate number to do so. Surprise, surprise!
There is no way we use £1200 of gas per year, even at the inflated prices they are now charging…. the direct debit system just allows them to accumulate huge sums of our money to use for their own benefit.
BG now reassess your direct debit every 6 months, charging you more in the winter, which makes a mockery of the monthly payment system, which is supposed to give you a way to budget for usage by making the same payment every month.
Huge thumbs down to British Gas… they are typical of everything that is going wrong in this country. Needless to say, will be changing suppliers very soon!
My boiler broke down on Thursday 29th Jan. I telephoned BG and was told someone would attend the next day Friday. I informed BG I had a five year old in the house but no joy.
On Friday, (I took the day off work) an engineer attends and says I have to first get a carpenter to dismantle the boiler housing as he could not get to the boiler and he went straight back into his car. I unscrewed the cabinet in two minutes, went out to get him, only to be told that he had to order parts in any event and wasn’t going to be back till the Monday (PS: this is the weekend snow was expected in London, like it hasn’t been in two decades!!!). I asked him how he knew what to order if he hadn’t even checked the boiler and was told that it could only be either of two things so he would order the two things.
On Monday, I took another day off again, he turned up and struggled with the boiler for over two hours at which point I needed to heat up food for my little boy to eat – only to be told that it was not polite for me to do so whilst he was working and that he would walk out if I proceeded to. Anyway, after a while he claimed he had finished and it was working. But just as he left the boiler went off again. I telephone their offices, complained about his behaviour and the fact that the boiler was still not working and requested they send someone else. I was told that his area manager would telephone me within the next 24 hours….. It’s 10 days now and no one has called.
On Tuesday 3rd Feb, the same engineers was sent despite my requesting another one. He struggled with my boiler again for a few hours and left saying it had been fixed. As soon as he left the light went off again. I quickly telephoned their office to inform them of this and they sent him back again. He then fiddled once more for some time and said he was going to have to get another part and if that didn’t work then whatever was wrong with the boiler was an unrelated problem which would cost me more money!!!
After he left, I started smelling gas and had to report this. When the man from National Grid turned up, he said it was so bad he had to shut me down completely. So now I have no heating, no hot water and could not cook!!!
On Thursday 5th Feb, the BG engineer then turns up again, fiddles again with the boiler and now says he has to order yet another part and will be visiting again tomorrow Tuesday 10th Feb.
As I stated earlier, I live with my five year old son. I have not had heating or hot water since Thursday 29th January. If I had called in cowboys I would have been blaming myself thinking I brought it on myself but with this experience of mine, I believe BG are the biggest COWBOYS in town and sadly are getting away with it!!!!
I have taken five days off work in total and still no joy with BG.
I don’t know who else to call but now phoning round friends for a recommended plumber/Corgi registered person I can ask to come help fix my boiler. I will never have anything to do with BG again and would like to complain to whoever governs them which I think is Offgas but couldn’t find where to complain on their site….. HELP!!!!
I have the homecare agreement with British Gas and asked them to carry out a service as some of the radiators were not working. An engineer came out and replaced a few of the valves on the radiators. We asked whether there was a charge and the engineer said ‘no, you are with homecare’. After the engineer left, we noticed that he had not replaced the valve in the kitchen so we had to call up and arrange for the engineer to come out again. The valve was replaced in the kitchen eventually and a few days later, I received a bill of £205.00 which was a shock. No where during the process was I informed that I would be changed to replace that one extra valve which the engineer missed first time round. I called up Customer Relations and spoke to 2 very unhelpful and aggressive people and was told that I had to pay for that one valve costing £205.00 because we had ‘smashed’ it up. What a joke!! I know it’s credit crunch and everyone is going through a tough time but they can’t just rip their customers off like that. We were never informed that we were going to be charged for a valve and for it to cost £205.00. Customer Sevices just don’t care, they don’t want to listen. British Gas needs to learn to assist and deal with the problems not blame their customers for things they have done wrong.
Trying to get a refund that’s due for over £200, they say they’ve sent two cheques out to me witch I’ve not received, but all my other mail is coming to me ok, they now told me there’s not a lot else they can do? I have another account direct debit with them but they will not pay it into there, it’s £200 that I need, before that they said I owed them £700 and hammered me with debt collectors who were very rude and aggressive, still trying to get my £200 back but with no joy. I will never deal with British Gas again.
I have to say I was shocked after years of paying direct debit to cover myself as a single parent then to receive a final bill of £477 for just my electric! For the last year I have paid just £33 pm dd for my elec and £84 pm gas dd which I think is ample considering we hardly use our gas and elec. My advice would be to cancel your payment to them before they can take your money, until the dispute is resulved! I cancelled mine!
British Gas just doesn’t know how to deal with the harsh realities of today’s economic climate. If you’re behind on your bill but have actually been trying to keep up you get treated exactly the same as someone who hasn’t paid a penny.
Avoid these guys at all costs. Do not get into a DD agreement with them, the slim amount you would save if everything was perfect is brutally swallowed up if you get bank charges.