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Hi, I'm going to try summarise the situation I'm in with British Gas that has led to them threatening to send the bailiffs round. I'm not expecting sympathy because the crux of the matter is that the bill hasn't been paid, but I do feel I am in a difficult and unfair situation and am more or less at my wits' end.
The bill I'm in trouble for not paying relates to a previous address - a flat I shared with 2 other people. We all moved out of that flat at the end of June and I am currently in another shared flat, where we're now with nPower and the account is in my flatmate's name.
Despite the fact that - at the previous flat - all three tenants' names were on the account, I made the damn fool mistake of giving British Gas my new address when we moved, thinking we could all be grown-ups about it, settle the outstanding debt and eventually get our deposit back from the previous landlord. What has actually happened is that the other two guys from the last flat have severed all contact with me, leaving me to take responsibility for the full bill.
Just to add to the fun, my new flat is on the same street as the old one, which seems to be beyond the comprehension of the semi-literate drones at British Gas who have repeatedly sent correspondence to the wrong address and then issued me with threats for not replying. This is on top of their inability to spell the names of the account holders, which have varied wildly from letter to letter and sometimes even within the text of one letter. But I digress.
Needless to say I have not paid them, partly because I'm obviously unhappy about having to pay for all three people (though I appreciate this is not British Gas's fault) but also because I believe the bills they are sending me are wildly inaccurate. I have retained copies of all the bills but don't have them to hand (I don't have a computer and am typing this from the public library) but will provide more specific details if anyone needs them. The basic gist of it is that when I originally provided them with the final meter readings I was told to expect a final bill of roughly £200 for gas and electricity combined; they proceeded to send me a bill for nearly £600.
Actually I'm missing a lot of things out here: for instance, they were still sending me ESTIMATED bills as late as October, as if the account had been transferred and was still in use. The "final total" has changed at least three times and they have repeatedly had to ask me to send the final meter readings because they "have no record of them". After submitting the final readings for the fourth time I got an email saying they were wrong - either the gas or electric reading apparently had a digit missing, so they gave me a final-final total from an estimate based on the previous reading. Not sure if they're even allowed to do that but obviously by this stage we can't exactly go back and check because the old flat has been occupied by other people for 6 months.
After the first two months or so I sent a complaint through their website to say I refuse to talk to anyone from British Gas on the telephone. At the time I did not have a landline so anytime I rang them from my mobile it was costing me a fortune, and more importantly it was getting me nowhere. The things they were saying to me on the phone bore absolutley no resemblance to reality, and the things I was saying to them were clearly being ignored. Just as a trivial example, in one of the first calls I made to them I mentioned that the surname of one of the other people on the account had been completely changed somehow so that it no longer resembled the guy's actual name - I heard fingers tapping on a keyboard and the woman said "Ok I've corrected that for you." Sure enough, all subsequent letters have had the same garbled surname as before.
Ok, this was suppose to be a summary but is turning into a long-winded rant. In a nutshell, I'm being told bailiffs are going to come to my house and take my stuff because I haven't paid what seems to me to be a vastly inflated bill - I say that based on British Gas's own initial statement about what the bill was going to be, plus the fact that there's no way on earth we ran up a £600 bill in three months during the summer! Like I said I will try to provide more detailed info about what period the charges are for but I don't have it to hand. I'm absolutely sure the bill is wrong though, and that's leaving aside the fact I've been lumped with a bill that should have been split between 3 people. The last estimated bill I received, covering an account that didn't exist up until the end of September, was only about £40 higher than the "final" bill up until the end of June. I'm convinced they are just plucking numbers out of the sky.
The usual stresses that arise for anyone who has to deal with utilities companies all apply here too, compounded by the fact that I don't have internet access at home and absolutely refuse to speak to them on the phone. For what it's worth, I am currently off work with depression which makes relatively simple tasks seem far more difficult than they should. I'm sure there are things I could/should have done earlier to resolve this issue that I haven't done. And I know I still owe them some money and that it isn't BG's fault my former friends decided to do a runner and leave me to settle the debt. The situation I'm in does seem unreasonable though and since I absolutely cannot pay them the amount they're asking for I'm very concerned about them sending people round to break in and help themselves.
Sorry this has been so long. I still feel like I'm missing out important details but I just can't think straight. Any and all advice is very welcome, even if it's of the "you don't have a leg to stand on - tough!" variety.
Gonna just click 'submit' to stop myself waffling on. Any questions ask away.
The bill I'm in trouble for not paying relates to a previous address - a flat I shared with 2 other people. We all moved out of that flat at the end of June and I am currently in another shared flat, where we're now with nPower and the account is in my flatmate's name.
Despite the fact that - at the previous flat - all three tenants' names were on the account, I made the damn fool mistake of giving British Gas my new address when we moved, thinking we could all be grown-ups about it, settle the outstanding debt and eventually get our deposit back from the previous landlord. What has actually happened is that the other two guys from the last flat have severed all contact with me, leaving me to take responsibility for the full bill.
Just to add to the fun, my new flat is on the same street as the old one, which seems to be beyond the comprehension of the semi-literate drones at British Gas who have repeatedly sent correspondence to the wrong address and then issued me with threats for not replying. This is on top of their inability to spell the names of the account holders, which have varied wildly from letter to letter and sometimes even within the text of one letter. But I digress.
Needless to say I have not paid them, partly because I'm obviously unhappy about having to pay for all three people (though I appreciate this is not British Gas's fault) but also because I believe the bills they are sending me are wildly inaccurate. I have retained copies of all the bills but don't have them to hand (I don't have a computer and am typing this from the public library) but will provide more specific details if anyone needs them. The basic gist of it is that when I originally provided them with the final meter readings I was told to expect a final bill of roughly £200 for gas and electricity combined; they proceeded to send me a bill for nearly £600.
Actually I'm missing a lot of things out here: for instance, they were still sending me ESTIMATED bills as late as October, as if the account had been transferred and was still in use. The "final total" has changed at least three times and they have repeatedly had to ask me to send the final meter readings because they "have no record of them". After submitting the final readings for the fourth time I got an email saying they were wrong - either the gas or electric reading apparently had a digit missing, so they gave me a final-final total from an estimate based on the previous reading. Not sure if they're even allowed to do that but obviously by this stage we can't exactly go back and check because the old flat has been occupied by other people for 6 months.
After the first two months or so I sent a complaint through their website to say I refuse to talk to anyone from British Gas on the telephone. At the time I did not have a landline so anytime I rang them from my mobile it was costing me a fortune, and more importantly it was getting me nowhere. The things they were saying to me on the phone bore absolutley no resemblance to reality, and the things I was saying to them were clearly being ignored. Just as a trivial example, in one of the first calls I made to them I mentioned that the surname of one of the other people on the account had been completely changed somehow so that it no longer resembled the guy's actual name - I heard fingers tapping on a keyboard and the woman said "Ok I've corrected that for you." Sure enough, all subsequent letters have had the same garbled surname as before.
Ok, this was suppose to be a summary but is turning into a long-winded rant. In a nutshell, I'm being told bailiffs are going to come to my house and take my stuff because I haven't paid what seems to me to be a vastly inflated bill - I say that based on British Gas's own initial statement about what the bill was going to be, plus the fact that there's no way on earth we ran up a £600 bill in three months during the summer! Like I said I will try to provide more detailed info about what period the charges are for but I don't have it to hand. I'm absolutely sure the bill is wrong though, and that's leaving aside the fact I've been lumped with a bill that should have been split between 3 people. The last estimated bill I received, covering an account that didn't exist up until the end of September, was only about £40 higher than the "final" bill up until the end of June. I'm convinced they are just plucking numbers out of the sky.
The usual stresses that arise for anyone who has to deal with utilities companies all apply here too, compounded by the fact that I don't have internet access at home and absolutely refuse to speak to them on the phone. For what it's worth, I am currently off work with depression which makes relatively simple tasks seem far more difficult than they should. I'm sure there are things I could/should have done earlier to resolve this issue that I haven't done. And I know I still owe them some money and that it isn't BG's fault my former friends decided to do a runner and leave me to settle the debt. The situation I'm in does seem unreasonable though and since I absolutely cannot pay them the amount they're asking for I'm very concerned about them sending people round to break in and help themselves.
Sorry this has been so long. I still feel like I'm missing out important details but I just can't think straight. Any and all advice is very welcome, even if it's of the "you don't have a leg to stand on - tough!" variety.
Gonna just click 'submit' to stop myself waffling on. Any questions ask away.
(rambling off-topic now, just needed to vent, aaaaaaaaah...)
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