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Hello,
I've got a complaint about British Gas, which seems to be a far more popular topic than I could guess! In particular, I would like to know exactly what to do in response to their threats. I've seen our exact same story everywhere online, but I haven't seen a good response anywhere.
I'm an American, and I've just moved to Britain with my British husband. We've lived in our home for about six months. We do NOT have paperless billing; as we are responsible consumers, we want physical copies of all of our bills, particularly paper copies that describe our energy consumption and the charges incurred. Without those, how can we keep a record of what they're charging us for? We have NEVER used a paperless billing account - in fact, my husband receives emails weekly from British Gas, exhorting him to sign up for paperless billing, which we do not want and have never signed up for. So clearly we don't have a secret, mysterious paperless billing account, right? If they're begging us to sign up for one?
Some months ago we received threatening letters from British Gas, couched in a tone of mounting hysteria, threatening us with a metric ****load of legal actions... since we hadn't made payments that we were never actually invoiced for. We spoke with the Indian call centre several times and every time the representatives have attempted to tell us that we receive our bills electronically (we do not) and insisted that we were deliberately ignoring our bills. They then assured us that we will begin to receive paper bills in the mail. After tedious negotiations with the cell center, we received a bill and paid it promptly. The call center people are perfectly nice, but they're obviously just reading from scripts and cannot find a **** to give - and they don't believe us when we tell them that we aren't being billed, because the all-knowing Computer says that we aren't paying our paperless bills, and so on ad nauseum.
We've just received a "Final Notice" that states that a representative will enter our home if we do not pay a certain mysterious bill that... we've never seen. They're ranting about disconnection and threats of legal harassment and ruined credit and taking our possessions away, etc etc. While they state the amount they'd like us to pay them, they haven't actually sent that all-important bill/invoice, so the seemingly random amount could very well be pulled out of their butts and probably is. Since British Gas is clearly capable of preparing and printing threatening (and possibly illegal) letters to our home, they're probably also capable of printing actual bills and sending them, right? Why aren't they?
At this point in America this would all be highly illegal, and I would probably contact a consumer watchdog group and get the direct phone number for the actual British Gas company, and then I would repeat "Ferguson vs British Gas 2009" in a growly voice down the line, and it would all go away. What on earth does one do in the UK? They seem to have surrounded themselves with an impenetrable barrier of call centers and the direct number isn't posted anywhere. Does writing a paper letter to the CEO of British Gas actually work? Can the British police actually give them a warrant to come to our home? At what point do we send them money (we haven't had a proper bill in months, and they would probably like to have some) and how much? HOW DO YOU LOVELY PEOPLE DEAL WITH THIS, PLEASE TELL ME.
arghhlharblaragharagllae
I've got a complaint about British Gas, which seems to be a far more popular topic than I could guess! In particular, I would like to know exactly what to do in response to their threats. I've seen our exact same story everywhere online, but I haven't seen a good response anywhere.
I'm an American, and I've just moved to Britain with my British husband. We've lived in our home for about six months. We do NOT have paperless billing; as we are responsible consumers, we want physical copies of all of our bills, particularly paper copies that describe our energy consumption and the charges incurred. Without those, how can we keep a record of what they're charging us for? We have NEVER used a paperless billing account - in fact, my husband receives emails weekly from British Gas, exhorting him to sign up for paperless billing, which we do not want and have never signed up for. So clearly we don't have a secret, mysterious paperless billing account, right? If they're begging us to sign up for one?
Some months ago we received threatening letters from British Gas, couched in a tone of mounting hysteria, threatening us with a metric ****load of legal actions... since we hadn't made payments that we were never actually invoiced for. We spoke with the Indian call centre several times and every time the representatives have attempted to tell us that we receive our bills electronically (we do not) and insisted that we were deliberately ignoring our bills. They then assured us that we will begin to receive paper bills in the mail. After tedious negotiations with the cell center, we received a bill and paid it promptly. The call center people are perfectly nice, but they're obviously just reading from scripts and cannot find a **** to give - and they don't believe us when we tell them that we aren't being billed, because the all-knowing Computer says that we aren't paying our paperless bills, and so on ad nauseum.
We've just received a "Final Notice" that states that a representative will enter our home if we do not pay a certain mysterious bill that... we've never seen. They're ranting about disconnection and threats of legal harassment and ruined credit and taking our possessions away, etc etc. While they state the amount they'd like us to pay them, they haven't actually sent that all-important bill/invoice, so the seemingly random amount could very well be pulled out of their butts and probably is. Since British Gas is clearly capable of preparing and printing threatening (and possibly illegal) letters to our home, they're probably also capable of printing actual bills and sending them, right? Why aren't they?
At this point in America this would all be highly illegal, and I would probably contact a consumer watchdog group and get the direct phone number for the actual British Gas company, and then I would repeat "Ferguson vs British Gas 2009" in a growly voice down the line, and it would all go away. What on earth does one do in the UK? They seem to have surrounded themselves with an impenetrable barrier of call centers and the direct number isn't posted anywhere. Does writing a paper letter to the CEO of British Gas actually work? Can the British police actually give them a warrant to come to our home? At what point do we send them money (we haven't had a proper bill in months, and they would probably like to have some) and how much? HOW DO YOU LOVELY PEOPLE DEAL WITH THIS, PLEASE TELL ME.
arghhlharblaragharagllae
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