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Complaint To British Gas
The following is a complaint sent to British Gas via their "speedy complaint response system" about a week ago as it stands. No reply, no acknowledgement as of time of posting but this will be updated when anything is forthcoming.
Some background information here with the added recent annoyance of continuing meter reads because we’re not using enough to satisfy their greedy mitts and a suggestion from someone who works for British Gas that we should make a complaint. So we have. Fat lot of good it’ll probably do.
Last night we were interrupted to have our gas reading taken. This happens – it seems – every other month. Apparently we’re on a "must read the meter in person because we think they’re up to no good" list.
Let me explain something: our house has two adults in it and no children; adults who work during the day. Adults who shower using an electric shower, who cook with an electric oven. Adults who may well have a higher tolerance for low temperatures than average and thus don’t have the central heating on every hour of the day. This – coupled with the fact that everyone has just been through something called "Summer" – means that we use very little gas; the odd washing up bowl filled with water here and there for the most part. Now, when someone uses very little gas the meter that measures how much gas is used doesn’t move very much. It’s one of those bizarre cause-and-effect situations. We don’t use much gas. We have low gas usage. Not much gas is used in our house. What I’m trying to say here is that our gas usage is quite low.
We would like to be taken off your "must read the meter in person so we can catch them in the act of turning back the dial" list because we consider it borderline harassment. Your recent attempts to increase our monthly payments despite our massive credit balance have not endeared us to you, and your incompetence in your repeated failures in addressing that problem (that problem being to put the monthly payment back down) have exacerbated our negative image of your company. Entering our home every other month – I’m sure you can agree – is taking our bad impression and making it worse. "The Customer Is Always Our Last Concern" is not a motto I’d employ if I were running a business, but that’s just me.
According to uSwitch we’re best off with you financially for now. Of course, uSwitch doesn’t included weighting for aggravation. We’d rather not have to change supplier – we quite like the easy life – so it would be much appreciated if you’d start treating us like normal, decent people (because we are) and not assuming we’re stealing your oh-so-precious energy.
not being funny mate but you blaming the wrong people there
British Gas dont read your Meter, it is normally Accuread or Siemens so blaming British Gas is pathetic…
If you got a problem with your meter being read take it up with them…
And anyway, if your meter wasnt read every quarter and you got an over estimated bill you would be on the phone complaining again.
Get a life mate, serious!
Thankyou chickenshit, anonymous coward for your comment. It’s not often that someone searching for ‘British Gas Problems 2009′ at 11:30 at night on a Tuesday tells me to ‘get a life’ and the laughter was much appreciated.
Let’s ignore for the moment the part about ‘a suggestion from someone who works for British Gas that we should make a complaint’ and the part on the ‘background information here’ link where I explain that we’ve always put the correct reading in online and … oh, I see you already have. I couldn’t give a shit which subcontracting company does the actual meter-reading; that’s not my problem, that’s for British Gas to work out for themselves. It’s called ‘responsibility’ and it’s theirs, not mine.
Incidentally, thanks for reminding me about this post. No, British Gas never got back to me. Looks like their customer service is … well, isn’t, I suppose. Gee, I sure hope you don’t work for British Gas and go around trying to deflect negative feedback about the gas company because with your comment and my comment now there’s probably going to be an increase in traffic looking for information about the bad British Gas service. I hope I don’t litter this comment with key phrases about the company.
So, in accordance with this site’s disclaimer – I hope you read it – and since you directed abuse in my direction (a violation of the site’s terms and conditions, as you no doubt already knew) we’d better proceed with the exposing your chickenshit, anonymous self to the web and making you look more like a tit. I have to. I don’t make these rules up; I just follow them and make them up.
Let’s see …
IP address 92.4.99.83 resolves to as43234.net which appears to be registered to The Carphone Warehouse. A Carphone Warehouse employee searching for British Gas late at night, perhaps? Or possibly just someone using their net? Well, whatever it is, can I just say: my, what a catch you are! No wonder you tried to remain anonymous.
lol not sure if its worth suggesting that a Tuesday evening… particularly where I live is not quite as eventful as you seem to think mark… and perhaps mr x thought that maybe a quiet night in commenting on his favourite employer might seem like a good way to pass time.. who knows…?
however… as sour as you are regarding your meter read issue, mr x remains correct, that infact its not British gas that control the regularity of your meter reads and it is your local MRA (meter read agency). further to that id like to point out that although you perhaps feel like British gas are checking your usage because they don’t feel you are "decent people" the meter readers are infact reading every meter in the estate/area…. are you going to accuse British gas of checking an entire estate regularly because… you live in an estate of undesirables? I don’t think so… because that’s clearly not the case.
however frustrating it might be to have someone visit your property every 60 days perhaps you should just accept that your not quite the high profile victim of British gas that you think and that you are blessed by the good service that is being provided to you by your local utility services.
I wonder if you would like to call your MRA and discus your issues with them directly, there might be some resolution to be sought?
regardless I wish you all the best in your quest for peace…solitude and an estimated gas bill…
before I go on ill go on to say that I am not an employee of British gas or any of the agencies concerned. I stumbled across this gold mine of nonsense in a search to find something to entertain me at my own place of work… which happens to be in the media industry…
Regards
Luke
I don’t think so Luke. If someone has a contract with British Gas and has problems with the service then they deal with British Gas and British Gas then deal with any subcontractor. You don’t get the customer to deal with the subcontractor. What if they did that everywhere. Thanks for your money. Oh you’ve got a problem with what we did? Well funny thing is we paid someone else to do that so it’s not our problem. You’d better call them instead. The buck stops with British Gas.
your welcome to contact british gas my friend and tell them to stop meter readers from coming out. best of luck with that.
It would annoy me too if I had some guy bothering me every other week to read my meter.
Here in the states our meters are outside and if they over estimate you normally see a reduction on the next bill.
There are also different ways to have your usage metered. One is you can go on the average amount used the previous two years and have a standard about the same bill every month or you can have it read every month.
Check with the company and see if there are other options!
igot a letter from british gas threatening me with a court order if i didnt let them read my meter my only crime that i go to work so iam not when accu read come the flats i live in have commmunal which is locked so ididnt recieve the loads of cards iam supposed to have recieved through my letter box iwaited in today for two hours the bloke turned up it took all 30 seconds get alife british gas and get off my back you have always got your money you greedy capitilist scum any one who supports you is no better
AccuRead are a contractor for British Gas, and so ultimately British Gas are responsible for their conduct.
my gas meter is read by a rep pf siemens. i was in the house until 1.30, during that time i found a ‘meter reader called and you were out’ card on the mat. i had not used washing machine, hoover etc so i know he did not knock. meter reader called again about 6.30 p.m. ringing loudly on the bell and hammering the hell out of the knocker. i asked him what time he had called previously and he said 10 so i said it was a pity he hadn’t knocked or rung at 10. no reply, just a rude grunt. is this the latest ploy for meter readers to get lots of overtime. this has also happened to my daughter at the other end of the road – same meter reader! am i paying a higher price for gas to pay overtime costs for meter readers?
not likely to be overtime we usually have to work ‘smart’ hours ie late at night to catch a high percentage of people in