http://www.martintod.org.uk/2008/09/12/british-gas-hiking-up-direct-debits/ A strong principled voice for Winchester Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:28:42 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://www.martintod.org.uk/2008/09/12/british-gas-hiking-up-direct-debits/comment-page-1/#comment-4538 Martin Tod » Blog Archive » Gas companies: BBC’s Fileon4 reports Sun, 26 Oct 2008 21:20:48 +0000 http://www.martintod.org.uk/?p=292#comment-4538 [...] « British Gas - hiking up direct debits [...] [...] « British Gas – hiking up direct debits [...]

]]> http://www.martintod.org.uk/2008/09/12/british-gas-hiking-up-direct-debits/comment-page-1/#comment-3817 David Shipley Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:57:29 +0000 http://www.martintod.org.uk/?p=292#comment-3817 Thank you for taking up this issue. As you can see from the size of my bill, I am not a particularly deserving case, but my experience suggests that as you suspect this is deliberate practice. The same thing happened last year, they climbed down and then after a few months reinstated the increase. I have been running credit balances (ie interest free loans) to BG of between £250 and £1000 for the last three years. I took my complaint to a very high level last year and thought that they would be careful not to repeat the behaviour; however it is clearly standard practice, even though their stock response is to call it a computer glitch "the computer does not recognise credit balances!!" Energywatch is no use, as so far as they are concerned if management deal with an issue by adjusting the overestimate, then it is not their problem. Since this appears to be a) endemic and b) deliberate then a fine or even the enforced removal of one or more board members seems to be the appropriate sanction. Or perhaps they could be forced to pay interest on credit balances. But when you see the nonsense on Energywatch's website you can tell why utilities are so weakly regulated in the UK. Thank you for taking up this issue. As you can see from the size of my bill, I am not a particularly deserving case, but my experience suggests that as you suspect this is deliberate practice. The same thing happened last year, they climbed down and then after a few months reinstated the increase. I have been running credit balances (ie interest free loans) to BG of between £250 and £1000 for the last three years. I took my complaint to a very high level last year and thought that they would be careful not to repeat the behaviour; however it is clearly standard practice, even though their stock response is to call it a computer glitch “the computer does not recognise credit balances!!”
Energywatch is no use, as so far as they are concerned if management deal with an issue by adjusting the overestimate, then it is not their problem. Since this appears to be a) endemic and b) deliberate then a fine or even the enforced removal of one or more board members seems to be the appropriate sanction. Or perhaps they could be forced to pay interest on credit balances. But when you see the nonsense on Energywatch’s website you can tell why utilities are so weakly regulated in the UK.

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