All entries for Saturday 12 January 2008

Poor British Gas Service hits Comic High!

Writing about web page http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/consumer/bills/article.html?in_article_id=425641&in_page_id=510

I decided not to Blog about why I am leaving British Gas Dual Fuel until this morning when I received a standard letter:

I’m sorry to hear you’re leaving British Gas. .... please call us on …. this will help us make sure the process is as smooth as possible for you.

To help this Smooth Process they included a Special Number to call and leave your final readings. Special indeed it was 0845á964á6464 and the same special number was printed twice on the letter; in the body & in the header! I know that many telephones have letters on them to allow clever mnemonics as phone numbers but which country would have the á character on the buttons?
Yes I just counted up the real numbers and worked out that á represented spaces but this letter was in the name of the Director of Customer Service, a Lois Hedg-peth. Another typo?!!
Since they have got me started, here are some of the examples of British Gas’s customer service that led me to move to Southern Electric.

• Set the Direct Debit payments such that I built up a debit of over £400 for electricity.
• Ignored my requests to adjust the payments before increasing the monthly DD to £107.
• I decided to calculate the annual consumption myself and tried to access my on-line billing record.
• I failed to log into my old British Gas Home account.
• Called the number on the error page.
• Called the next day to find out it was the wrong number.
• Called the online specialist helpline to enable the new ‘dual account’. “You should see both Gas & Electric”, I was told.
• Logged on to find that I could only see the Gas account.
• Called back to find the accounts were NOT linked “You will have to use a different email address for the second”, I was advised.
• Tried this but was still locked out.
• “You will have to wait until we join the accounts properly”.
• I got them to dictate the numbers I needed to caluulate the annual bills.
• Logged on to Money Supermarkets Gas & Electric site.
• Switched to Southern Electric for both because of their good service record.
• Selected the Hydro-Electric option for electricity. I wanted to decouple this from Oil & Gas prices. Gas should not be used at such a rate for power generation.

Yes I realise that my middle class green selection simply reduces the renewables content of the main tariffs for Southern Electric & Scottish Power customers. Customer service and the carbon produced will not be changed if customers do not vote by changing.

Just getting the right direct debit levels at British Gas prices has reduced my monthly bills by £40. Added to the £20 a month cut in my household insurance with 1 comparison and 1 call. The advice to spend one day on your finacial affairs can save you some real cash was true for me.

Robert McGonigle : 12 Jan 2008 13:15 |  Tags: Poor British Gas Service Switching Electricity Switching Gas |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem