A UK personal finance blog and account of a personal finance website owner.
A UK personal finance blog and account of a personal finance website owner.
About 3 months ago I was called by British Gas and having a few minutes of free time I listened to what was said.
Everything made sense and I could see a definite saving so I agreed to switch from Southern Electric to British Gas.
I did what was asked of me, signed what I needed to and left things in the capable hands of a giant national power supply company.
The other day, I received my quarterly bill from Southern Electric…
Needless to say I was a bit confused.
Before calling Southern Electric and questioning them, as to why they were still billing me when to my knowledge British Gas was my supplier, I called British Gas to confirm they had taken over my supply correctly.
The customer number I gave them showed a closed account!
The account manager performed another search of the British Gas database based on my address and discovered something strange…
…because my address had been entered incorrectly on the piece of paper given to the engineer sent out to flick the switches, the job was cancelled and nothing more happened.
It was buried and forgotten about!
So thanks to an admin error, I’ve been missing out on cheaper electricity!
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July 31st, 2007 at 5:09 pm
Seems a bit silly when they have already gone to the trouble of contacting you and getting a new customer, not to try a little harder to get your correct address. I have to say though, it’s typical of a big company. When jobs are passed from one department to another, things are easily lost and forgotten about. What does the engineer care if you have your electricity swapped or not, he probably just wants to move onto the next job asap and get home.
August 10th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Firstly, if someone calls to tell you that they can offer you a good deal, there’s a good chance that someone else can do even better.
Secondly, British Gas are rubbish. It sucks that you have missed out.