Here's One I Prepared Earlier

Please excuse the length - I dictated this Using Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 so it’s more verbose that normal – but my is it soooo much easier to rant verbally….

I’m posting this now because I didn’t before – mostly lethargy, but also an urge to wait and see what happened. And the answer is… Nothing. FSB never replied to two emails, British Gas have lost my account it would seem, and have never event sent me a reminder. And so due to glorious inefficiency all round, I emerge victorious. Will the last person competent enough to do so please turn of the lights….

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When I took on the lease of our new shop in the beginning of June I initially tried, admittedly not very hard, to find out who our utility providers were. These days this is a less than simple task, and it was only a month or so later when I had a little more time to dedicate to this task that I was able to find that British Gas were supplying both gas and electricity to the property. When I phoned up to get the bill transferred into my company's name we began to discuss rates. It works slightly differently when you’re a business, and you seem to have a little more negotiating power about the rates and standing charges that you're going to pay, however until you have agreed a contract with your gas supplier you are put on a ‘special’ rate, for which you may read punitive rate.

British Gas, when I pointed this out to them, said they would quite happily backdate the tariffs they were offering to the date of my taking over the property, but I had two objections to this. Firstly it is an overt form of blackmail. I do not like having my decisions affected in this way, and given that British Gas were not the most competitive suppliers, I would have had good reason not to choose them anyway. I refuse to be subjected to what I considered to be a shoddy practice, and contacted NPower who were offering a more competitive tariff are both gas and electricity supplies.

For those who don't know how these things work, the process of changing supplier takes some six to eight weeks, during which time you have to pay whatever special tariff the old supplier chooses to apply to your account. It was about nine weeks later that British Gas sent me a bill based upon this punitive tariff which firstly quoted a wholly unrealistic estimated electricity reading, and also made no reference to the fact that they were no longer providing the supply to my property (specifically they were charging for dates after NPower had taken over the supply). This was very much a case of showing a red rag to a bull, and in very short order I had made my feelings on the matter cleared to British Gas, and had also spoken to NPower who confirmed that they had informed British Gas of the date of their taking over the supply, including the meter reading.

British Gas had not acted on this information, and clearly made no note of the reading (hence their ludicrous estimate) and more importantly when I told them to sort out their own mess, they told me to contact NPower and get it sorted out from their side (though after a few short words they did agree to change their records without placing any more obstacles in my away)

Let's look at specific numbers to get a little bit of an idea about why I'm getting upset with British Gas...

Firstly will deal with the estimate of 3485 units used between the 8th June and 1st October. The actual reading, which is about half of this, reflects the fact that we are running two servers and half a dozen computers at any one time as well as lighting our office for about 10 hours a day. The previous occupants used practically no electronic equipment and therefore used a fraction of what we are using, so this is clearly a cavalier attempt on the part of British Gas to frontload their cash flow. Then come the tariffs British Gas 13p per kilowatt; NPower 8.26p. Standing charge: British Gas £133 per quarter approximately; NPower £16.24 per quarter. In other words the unit charge is twice as much and the standing charge about eight times as much with British Gas.

This is simply not fair, and I don't like things that aren't fair. The important point to note is that whatever my statutory obligations, I do not have a contract with British Gas, or at least not one I have signed or agreed to. Were it a case of 10 or 20% extra to pay then I might stomach this, but given that I'm being screwed I'm going to put up a fight. At the moment I’ve raised the matter with the Federation of Small Businesses, of which we are a member, and through them will raise the matter with Energy Watch, the ombudsman.