Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2008 12:28 pm Post subject: British Gas
I received the gas bill for the last quarter yesterday, £9.10. I pay £33 pm direct debit so because we use the woodburner now and hardly central heating at all, was in credit by £72
Then I noticed the new payment amount is going to be £38 pm. So, how do they work that out then?
I phoned up, spent 5 minutes following stupid instructions and pressing 1, 2 ,3 or 4 as directed (then had to hang on for 10 minutes listening to naff music ) until eventually getting to speak to someone real.
Took another 15 minutes before I could convinced aforementioned real person that, yes I am definitely paying far too much, yes, I really do want my direct debit reduced considerably and, yes, I really do want the £72 refunded to me immediately.
How can they justify this? Seems tantamount to theft when they take your money for nothing. If they do this to 1000's of customers they must be stashing away an awful lot of money.
It's annoying isn't it. I think they base the DD payments on your previous year's useage, plus a huge percentage more for the price increases.
Our payment is stupidly high, especially as we only have a little flat. but our insulation is rubbish. definitely looking for a house with cavity walls. _________________ Aqui, T and Baby Jack!
Scottish Power did exactly the same CP and I used to be with British Gas. I've kicked both of them into touch, plenty of choice these days.
Scottish Power took £230 month for a couple of months there. I used £50 for the month but they would only reduce it to £170. They make millions in interest from those of us daft enough to stay with them and they penalise you for not using DD. I've changed to Scottish Hydro, I'll see how they perform.
It was on the BBC news yesterday that 'apparently' when power companies are strapped for cash they up the direct debit payments. Although they deny this. The example they gave was a young girl in a flat paying DD of £40 was in credit by £70 odd quid so she phoned up to reduce her payments and was told she couldn't as they where going to up her payments to £98
So do what we do pay what you would pay DD into a building society account so that YOU get the interest then pay your quarterly bill. For goodness sake though do remember to increase your payments accordingly and don't dip into it in the summer when your bills are smaller!
_________________ "If we reduce the amount of stuff we allow to accumulate in our lives, we won't have to organise it"
Elaine St James from her book 'Simplicity'
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