Letter to:

Dear Mr Watson

Regarding your letter of 19th November, in which you state that you consider £50 to be reasonable compensation for out inconvenience.

Let's get this straight:
On 14th March we received a bill for gas we had already paid for, and contacted British Gas to sort out the problem. This took about an hour on the phone. We were assured that it would be dealt with.
On 28th March we received another bill for gas we had already paid for, and contacted British Gas to sort out the problem. Another hour on the phone, and the assurance that it would be dealt with.
On 29th May we received yet another bill for gas we had already paid for. It was obvious that the matter had not been dealt with, and yet again we spent a long time on the phone trying to sort out the matter. Yet again we were assured that it would be dealt with.

Had this been the end of the matter, I would consider an offer of £50 compensation to have been reasonable. We had been put to considerable inconvenience, and it would have been a fair recompense.

However, this was by no means the end of the matter:
On 5th August we received yet another bill for gas already paid for. It was quite evident that nothing had been done to resolve the problem, and yet again we went through the highly stressful and frustrating business of trying to contact someone at British Gas who could sort out the problem. Once again we were assured that the problem would be dealt with. Once again, it wasn't.

On 22nd August we were about to leave to spend five days - our only holiday this year - in Devon when the post arrived. It contained a letter from British Gas - notice of a court order threatening disconnection of our supply for non-payment of our account. Instead of leaving early to miss the worst of the traffic, I spent the next four hours on the phone trying to contact someone who could deal with the problem and could fax through to us an assurance that our supply would not be disconnected and that the matter of double billing had been resolved once and for all. This is apparently not possible, and in the end we left having been assured that the matter was being dealt with, and that our supply would not be disconnected.
You will appreciate that given the history of our dealings with British Gas, this did not give us much confidence. However, we could either accept the assurance or miss our holiday - we decided to drive down to Devon.

So far British Gas had cost us 8 hours of stressful time on the phone, the loss of most of the first day of our five day holiday, and the worry hanging over us that when we returned from Devon that we would find that the gas supply had been cut off. Given that British Gas had not acted on any of their assurances on four previous occasions, the assurance that they would not do so given to us by phone did not engender much confidence.

On the 5th September we were visited without an appointment by a representative of British Gas who had been, as I understand the matter, been sent to sort out the disconnection of our supply. You will understand that I was more than a little angry about this, and although I think I dealt with him courteously, I failed to make a note of his name. Having shown him all the relevant documentation he was, to his credit, very apologetic and promised to make his personal aim to deal with the matter.

At this time I requested from British Gas copies of all data dealing with this matter held by them. This came through a couple of weeks later - a large, unorganised pile of papers which it has taken me some time to sort into a logical order.
On 26th September we received yet another bill from British Gas for gas we had already paid for. It was quite obvious that in spite of all the assurances given to us on so many occasions, nothing had been done to resolve the matter.
It simply beggars belief that any organisation of any size can handle their affairs with such utter incompetence and utter contempt for their customers. We have been assured that the matter had been dealt with no less than six times. It had taken so far eleven hours of our time, in phoning, writing letters, and sorting out information. It had blighted our holiday.

All this was because of a simple administrative confusion which any reasonable competent organisation could have dealt with quickly.

You offer of £50 is, quite frankly, an insult. It values my time as less than the minimum wage, which shows the contempt in which British Gas hold their customers. British Gas has no right to steal my personal time. It is theft, and what is more the theft of something that can never be replaced. At the very least I expect to be paid for my time at a rate commensurate with my normal hourly charge, something for which there is legal precedent - see the article attached.
I will be pursuing British Gas for recovery of the full amount invoiced to date, and for additional invoices raised to cover time spent in responding to your correspondence. yours sincerely

Copies to:

Gas and Electricity Consumer Council
Sir Michael Perry CBE - Chairman, Centrica plc
Sir Roy Gardner - Chief Executive, Centrica plc
Mike Alexander - Chief Operating Office, Centrica plc
Mark Clare - Deputy Chief and Managing Director, British Gas