UKC

Got a call from my elderly mother-( who lives in a Housing Association home)

She said she got yet another gas bill sent to her address, first one was £8k, second £11k and now this third one for £16k. A bad enough mistake, but even more so as her gas us included in her rent, she does not get a gas bill!
But this is just the start of a sorry tale. ......

On the first bill arriving (£8k) mother called me,and I did not believe her( she gets easily confused)
I went round to her place saw the bill and called both the housing association and British Gas, both apologised, and promised to sort it out , between them.
I told mum, it was a computer error, easily sorted , not to worry, she was not going to have to pay thousands as she had worried about.

On the second bill arriving,(£11k) I called them both back, both very apologetic, this time I insisted that BG read out what address they had on their system for the housing association HQ ( the billing address) surprise surprise it was still my mothers. I gave them the full address and contact details of the HA, they told me it WAS updated now, and we would get no more huge bills. I phoned the HA, I told them I had sorted it out myself, no thanks to them, all very apologetic , and they said they would write and complain to BG and confirm the details had been corrected.
I told mum, it was a computer error, easily sorted , not to worry, she was not going to have to pay thousands as she had worried about.

Today, when I saw the £16k bill, I called BG, who were very apologetic , the billing address for the HA on the system was STILL my mothers address. They asked me for the HA billing address , I gave them the full address and contact details of the HA, they told me it WAS updated now, and we would get NO more huge bills.

However they then said said that they HAD received a letter of complaint from the HA, regarding the incorrect address , and had responded to them. I called the HA told them that I had sorted it out again ( apparently) and asked what BG said in reply to their complaint about them using the wrong address, they said they had not received a reply !!!!

At that same time Mum who had been listening , was interrupting trying to tell me something,
I asked the bloke at the HA to hold on to hear what she was telling me,
I looked up , and mum was standing clutching a letter from BG.............

Unbelievable, the dickheads at BG actually got a complaint from the HA, about them using an incorrect billing address, and really did reply to the incorrect address to say there were dealing with it!!!!!

I told mum, not to worry, it was a computer error, probably never going to be sorted , and she was probably going to have another bill to pay millions of pounds ,and when it arrives I will buy her a nice frame for it

In reply to Jim C:

A really touching tale - it will be interesting to see how big the bill eventually gets and whether the HA will reduce the rent as their gas is free.....

In reply to pneame:


I think I will be disappointed if they don't cock up again ,

(mum, is actually chuffed that ,even if she does has onset dementia , she is not as confused as BG ,at least she has a sense of humour,)

In reply to Jim C:

This could kill a good 10-15 minutes of You & Yours

In reply to Jim C:

It took bg 10 attempts to send me a correct bill that covered gas for a 6 month let a few years ago. This included many threatening letters for the incorrct amount, and bailiffs turning up at my house which I had to get the police to remove (after showing them my in goin correspondence with bg. The only way I managed to sort it out was via offgen. Amazingly within a week I had a bill for the period of my rent and a 50% discount.

As a consequence bg wont see another penny of my money

In reply to balmybaldwin:
I'm in flat 1 of 2. Took a year and a half for NPower to stop billing me for next door's gas+electric supply, and when I say billing I mean they debited my account every month and I had to phone em for a refund. When they eventually stopped billing me and agreed that I was not the guy living in the flat next door they started billing the guy next door under "myname, flat2, etc" and then sent me we're-handling-your-complaint letters meant for the bloke next door. Some companies suck.

In reply to Jim C:

It's not just BG, it's any large organisation.
We moved business premises and ended up being double billed by BT.
So one phone call later and it's all sorted we thought.
It finally took 18 months of multiple calls and emails every month, our phone and Internet was cut off at least once a month but as soon as we contacted them it was a case of, ahh yes sir, I can see the problem on your account, don'tw orry I will recommend activate you and sort it out.
It was a bloody nightmare.

Had similar with NPower at home, the bath leaked and flooded the living room so the insurance put a bunch of industrial de humidifiers in to dry the plaster.
For that month our lekky bill was astronomical and the insurance paid it.
We were not on direct debit at the time so when our bill came we paid it and then the next bill came 3 months later estimated and massive.
I rang them and explained about the dehumidifiers and gave them the actual reading but because the reading was far lower than their estimation (based on running the dehumidifiers 24/7 forever apparently) they had to send a meter reader round.
No problem, 1 week later a guy arrives and takes a reading and we are sent a new bill based on that reading.
It's still hundreds of pounds more than it should be so I rang them again.
I asked them why I was being grossly overbilled despite them having the meter reading and the exact words were, "well sir, unfortunately our computer can not accept such a large discrepancy between the estimated bill and the actual one, so what you need to do is pay it and we will keep lowering the readings every 3 months until things balance out, it should only take a year".
I asked for a final settlement instead and changed providers.

In reply to Jim C:

I used to be with British Gas. They spent a year convinced I was a man living in Cheshire and a woman living in Norwich. Simultaneously. They were awesome at apologising and promising to sort it out - but they never actually did sort it out. Their computer system must be a nightmare.

In reply to balmybaldwin:

I forgot to mention, the bill said if not paid in 7 days another £100 would be added.( just to turn the knife

The place is jinxed, when she moved in, there was confusion over the electricity meters, and phones. No one could find the place as it had been on the land of an old folks home( now a private home) and given two street names and two street numbers.

The new houses built on the grounds , so the first address just took them through the gates to the big house, the rest of the houses were given a complete other address and numbering,but many people did not even drive through the gates when they saw the big house.

During the built, 4 years ago or so, they apparently numbered the plots, and that is what the services used during installation.
Snag was someone then numbered the houses in reverse to the plot numbers, so she got someone else's electricity bill, until I called them up and gave them the barcode number from her meter, which from their records they realised was for another house number, and we then had to get all the tenants to call in with their own meter barcode. But that was all the beginning, why they now screwed up the gas bills out of the blue, is beyond me.

In reply to Dax H:



I've had this too. NPower lost my letter telling them I'd moved in. It took me about 4 months to notice no bills, so I rang them up. Paid 6 months (yes, it took them that long) in one go, thought it was all settled. But that really high month factored into every bill for a year. After that, the bills were about right, but my account was still in credit by 800 quid, and it's taken another year to draw back down. It's daft, but it seems the computer's word is law.


Around here SA tenancy agreements don't let you change...