COPY OF LETTER SENT 30th January 2004 (name and address withheld):

British Gas
Millstream
Maidenhead Road
WINDSOR
Berks

SL4 5GD

FOR THE PERSONAL ATTENTION OF SIR ROY GARDENER

ELECTRICITY SUPPLY -
xxxxxx, LEEDS LS10 xxx

Before reading any further I must point out that this letter has been written over numerous hours for the personal attention of Sir Roy Gardener, hence the heading "For the personal attention of Sir Roy Gardener". Please think VERY hard and ask yourself the question "Am I Sir Roy Gardener?" If the answer is "yes" then please read on. If, however, the answer is "No" then will you stop reading this letter as it is not addressed to you, put it back in the envelope and re-direct it to the addressee, one Sir Roy Gardener, chairman of British Gas. Should you continue to read this and then decide that someone else inside British Gas should answer this then rest assured that it will be returned to you, repeatedly if necessary, until the aforementioned Sir Roy Gardener answers personally! I do hope that I have made myself clear!!!!!! I DO NOT, repeat NOT, wish to receive any correspondence from anyone with a job title of "Personal Assistant to Sir Roy Gardener", "Customer Services Manager", "Press Secretary", "Assistant to…", "Private Secretary to…." or from anyone else who is not actually Sir Roy Gardener!!! If you find this difficult to understand then perhaps you could find someone within the organisation who would be able to explain it to you - Sir Roy Gardener perhaps?

We shall now start to unveil the events of the past four years - are you sitting comfortably: then we'll begin!

In December 1999 my fiancee and I bought a newsagents business at the above address. The previous owner, a Mrs Kim Davey, now believed to be resident in France, had told us that she received her electricity supply from Yorkshire Electricity and this is the company we signed a contract with from 13-12-99.

A week or so later we received a letter from Yorkshire Electricity which informed us that should we wish to change suppliers we would need to quote the supply number. The supply number given was 2345646090510. This supply number is I believe also known as the 'MPAN' number.

In early January 2000 a rep from British Gas came into the shop telling us we could save money with British Gas so we signed up!

Over the next few months I did not receive a bill from British Gas despite countless phone calls. The only reply I ever got was "your account is dormant, we'll look into it". Needless to say no-one ever contacted me.

In October 2000 Universal Utilities visited contacted me regarding supplying me with electricity. They were acting as agents for ENRON. On 19-10-2000 we signed up! I gave them the same MPAN number I had given British Gas - the number I had been given by Y.E. As above, no bills ever arrived, and despite numerous phone calls the only reply I got was, as above, "your account is dormant, we'll look into it". As above, no-one did, the only difference between them and British Gas was Universal were harder to get hold of!

Some time early in 2001 Northern Electric arrived on the scene and as we could not get a bill out of ENRON we signed up with them, partly out of desperation to get a bill from someone as no-one seemed to want to send us a bill. We supplied them with the same MPAN number as we had done to everyone else. We knew that at some point the electricity we had used would have to be paid for to someone but we had no idea who! Once again, weeks down the line the replies we got were the same as British Gas or ENRON, "your account is dormant, etc. etc. etc."

In April 2001 I finally rang Y.E. to try and sort out the mess and to get a bill from someone. When I compared MPAN numbers it was obvious they were different and Y.E. told me that the MPAN number I had been handing out (supplied originally by Y.E.) was the wrong number.

Come June 2001 we received a letter from ENRON stating that they had "successfully taken supply of your site(s)". As we had signed with Northern Electric AFTER signing with ENRON some months earlier I felt sure that we could not be a customer of ENRON and after ringing Y.E. I was told we were still customers of Y.E. I wrote a very strong letter to ENRON pointing out I was not, never had been and never would be a customer of theirs but despite several pages of abuse we did not receive a reply!.

In July 2001 we got a bill from Y.E. for over £2000 for electricity supplied back to December 1999. The MPAN number quoted on the bill was 2345646095519. I rang to say this was far too much to pay all at once, especially as they hadn't bothered to send a bill for over 18 months. I spoke to Janice Milne who was, and still is, based in Hull and after negotiation she agreed to a "compensation" package which meant she would ask for a certain number of units to be "credited" to our account. This amounted to approximately £800, including VAT. Part of this was due to the fact we had not originally been offered a business rate. On 17 July 2001 we signed a contract with Y.E. to supply our electricity for a period of two years.

On checking our bank balance at the end of November 2001 my fiancee noticed that the balance was incorrect and after investigation it seemed that ENRON had removed £191.84 from our account. My fiancee informed the bank that we did not get our electricity from ENRON and they agreed to credit our account which they did within a few days. I wrote a VERY nasty letter to ENRON - phone contact was impossible - and true to form they did not reply.

A new 2 year contract has now been signed with Y.E.(now Npower) and this runs to June 2005. We have paid our electricity bills by direct debit to Y.E./Npower and we have never had a problem once we sorted out the original problem.]

In August this year we started receiving letters from British Gas informing us that they were our electricity supplier and if we weren't could we supply details of who was. I sent the information by fax but still the letters continued. My faxed replies became more and more terse, each time informing them that they did not supply us with electricity. I asked numerous times for a reply to my letters but no response to my letters arrived. On 5 September I received another letter informing me that the recorded delivery letter they sent me confirmed my occupancy. I never received a recorded letter and would be interested to see who signed for it as no staff member recalls doing so and I do not remember receiving such a letter. I faxed the letter back, as requested and sure enough, on 29 September 2003 I received a "Dear Customer" letter informing me that they have "successfully resolved the issue" and they enclosed an up-to-date bill of £1051.47p. This quoted the MPAN number ending "510" and related to a meter number CF70K01016. I rang and asked to speak to Matthew Bateman, the man who signed the letter, but was told he didn't ring people. I found that a very arrogant attitude but got through to someone called Rebecca in Credit Control. Despite telling her that British Gas were invoicing against the wrong MPAN number she refused to budge. Her reply: "the invoice has been printed - it has to be paid." She refused to accept a mistake had been made, telling me that it could not possibly be a mistake - "we do not make mistakes." When I told her I was already paying Npower she told me that was my problem and it was up to me to get a refund from them and as far as she was concerned British Gas were my electricity supplier and they would be chasing payment. Asking them what would happen if I refused to pay on the grounds that they didn't supply me I was told in no uncertain terms that they did supply me and the bill would have to be paid..Furthermore, they would have my supply cut off! I spoke to both her and a man (David?) who also told me the bill would have to be paid as they did not make mistakes etc. etc. - the same script Rebecca was obviously reading from.

I was unable to convince them that they HAD made a mistake and they were trying to charge me against an incorrect MPAN number. During one of these one-way conversations I managed to elicit the information that the MPAN number British Gas were quoting (the one ending in 510) related to the "16" part of "14-16 Town Street". They insisted that as this was (according to them) a valid MPAN number and as such there MUST be a meter in No. 16. No amount of repeating that the only meter was in No 14 and this had a different MPAN number would budge them from their insistence that they MUST be right, the bill must be paid and if I didn't pay then they would come and cut my supply off!! I tried to explain that originally there was only one shop (16) and the previous owner had knocked through to make two shops into one (14 & 16) but I felt I was talking in a foreign language as everything I told them fell on deaf ears.

I was now worried sick about all this and decided to contact my solicitor who advised me to contact 'energywatch', the consumer watchdog for the energy industry. I registered my complaint with them on 15 October 2003 and they wrote to British Gas on 16 October 2003. I quote from their letter in reply: "The property used to be two different shops. Numbers 14 and 16. The two shops were put together, and the meter in number 16 was removed. There is still an MPR for number 16 and British Gas are billing this consumer for this MPAN. The MPAN for No. 16, which is invalid, is 234564090510. The MPAN for number 14 is 2345646095519 and this MPAN is valid. This is with Npower Direct, as per MPAS online. Spoke to Suzanna at Business Gas who is putting a hold on the account."

"Good old Suzanna" I thought! At last the account is on hold whilst this Brian Rix farce is sorted out. Silly me, I should have known better. For a moment I got very giddy and forgot I was dealing with British Gas. Eight days later I received a visit from two charming intellectuals from a company called "Legal & Trade" who left me with a super letter which started with the welcoming "Notice of intent to disconnect."

As I was not in the shop at the time a letter was left in an envelope with the one word "electric" scrawled in a childlike hand which hardly filled me with confidence that I would be able to explain much to these two Mastermind contestants who were unable to write the word "electric" on the envelope in joined up writing and using capital letters. It threatened that they may obtain a warrant of entry without my permission to disconnect the supply. The only phone number on the letter led me back to the lovely Rebecca at British Gas who once again went into auto-pilot and refused to accept they were wrong etc. etc. etc. Basically I felt I was being called a liar. I then had to contact energwatch again who contacted Kerry Walters at British Gas in order to get the account put on hold. I received the energwatch letter on 27-10-03.

On 12th November 2003 I received a letter from Kerry Walters which not only ignored ALL the points and facts raised by energywatch but apart from a VERY brief reference to the energywatch letter in the opening sentence then ploughed on and simply said that we owed the money as previously billed. I was ASTOUNDED to read further in the letter that the implication was I was once again lying. They refuted my claim in my original energywatch that there was no meter in No 16 by saying "the meter is fully operational". I rang Kerry Walters to explain the mix-up with MPAN numbers but once again the auto-pilot switched in. Despite telling him that the meter readings were the same as the ones Npower were billing us for he refused to investigate further.. He was totally unable to answer how energywatch could look at MPAS online and tell that there was no meter in No 16 and yet he read the same file to discover a meter!! Sheer genius!!!

As I seemed to be the only one who knew that there was no meter in No 16 I tried to ring Walters back to finally clarify which meter they intended to cut off if I didn't pay my bill - I reckoned that provided they tried to cut a non-existent meter off they may struggle a little! If I was in the shop at the time I stood a good chance of convincing them there was no meter. Walters was not in but I spoke to Dave King who made the fatal mistake of asking me what the problem was! When I had vented my spleen and been through the entire rigmarole again he informed me that the only way to solve this was to send a meter reader out. One was duly despatched but unfortunately came armed only with the address "16". He found the meter in No.14, thought it was 16 and then moved in to the top half of the shop which he assumed was 18 where - surprise, surprise - he didn't find a meter. I was not in the shop at the time but spoke to Dave King that same afternoon and told him what had happened. He said he would wait for the report to arrive in a few days and would ring me. Three weeks later he rang to say he still had not received a report so he would send someone else. I stressed that he MUST be told that the addresses were 14-16 and he said this would happen. I also received a call from Meter Plus and once again I stressed 14-16. On the day of the visit I placed a piece of A4 paper over the meter in No 14, stating the MPAN number and the meter serial number. I also put an A4 sheet in the cupboard that used to contain the meter in No16, stating the MPAN number. When I arrived back at the shop the meter plus man was in his van, ready to leave. I asked him if he had been in and he confirmed he had. I noticed from the notes he had made that he had once again simply assumed that the meter he had read was the correct one and had not bothered to check the serial numbers (the numbers are the same but the two letters BEFORE the numbers were different). According to a staff member he had simply taken the A4 sheet off the front of the meter, tossed it aside and ignored what was written on it. Had I not arrived back when I did this whole sorry saga would still be continuing.

I have now finally received a letter from Dave King which finally admits that I was indeed right all along!!!! I have never received my electricity from British Gas, ENRON or anyone else because the MPAN number supplied originally by Yorkshire Electricity was wrong and related to a non-existent meter in No16 and that there is only one meter in 14-16 Town Street and this meter is being billed by Npower. THIS IS WHAT I HAD SAID ALL ALONG! The letter ends with a derisory offer of £50 compensation - the same sum I was offered by Walters when he was sure British Gas was right!

The incompetence throughout this has been totally astounding!

From the outset Yorkshire Electricity supplying the wrong MPAN number was the catalyst.

The saga continued firstly with British Gas, then ENRON and then with Northern Electric failing to take control of the supply. At no point did I get replies to ANY correspondence with ANY supplier regarding taking control of the supply. At no point did anyone from British Gas, ENRON or Northern Electric PICK UP A PHONE AND ACTUALLY TALK TO SOMEONE!

I am in possession of internal memos from what was then Yorkshire Electricity, one of which states the following useful information:

"SPOKE TO MR NEWTON RECVD LETTER FRM JULIAN SYKES WITH INCORR MPAN TO CH GE SUPPR NOT HAPPY SPOKE TO MICHELLE AT ENRON TO REG CORRECT MPAN FOR CUST CUST ALSO SENDG A COPY OF PRICES HE WOULD HAVE BEEN PYG IF COS HAD GONE THRU APRIL 2000 WILL THEN ARRGE TO CREDIT DIFF OF CHRGS"

Although I cannot prove who wrote this memo the above comments were written some ten days (27-04-01) after I received a bill from Y.E. for electricity they were supplying me with, even though we though we had changed suppliers a number of times! Obviously I had contacted Y.E. and this was the internal record. I think the crucial phrase is "Spoke to Michelle at Enron to reg correct MPAN for cust" which unless I am very much mistaken means that someone at Y.E. spoke to someone called 'Michelle' at ENRON and gave her the correct MPAN number!!! This was done over TWO AND A HALF YEARS AGO! The question I ask of Michelle at ENRON is "Given the fact that you had a phone call from a rival supplier (something that seems to me to be a VERY rare occurrence), why did you not access your computer and enter the correct MPAN number?"- perhaps now you would have had a customer who received his electricity from you!

Since the start of this farce way back in August 2003 when we first started receiving letters from British Gas we have been treated VERY badly. We received quite a few letters marked "Important - This is not a circular". I replied to these by fax but although they were obviously important to me they were not at all important to you as you totally ignored them, failing to reply to the questions I posed. Matthew Bateman is arrogant in the extreme by not talking to customers. It is obviously fine for him to send threatening letters out willy-nilly but refuses to talk to these self same people! You continued to send letters that ignored my reply to the previous correspondence, the letters becoming progressively more threatening. Indeed, on one occasion I sent a reply on a copy of your bill, dated 08-10-03 on which was written "You are in possession of a three page letter which basically says you do not, never will, & never have supplied me with electricity. Cancel this bill. (Copy of this with original documentation sent to my solicitor!)" There have also been various replies to various letters I have sent, both to you and my solicitor. Significantly, the only reply I ever received was from my solicitor!

Over the last four or five months I have spoken to numerous "parrots" at British Gas about the fact that I did not receive electricity from British Gas who took lots of details; made all the right noises but were totally powerless to do anything about it as all these details either stayed at that level or if they filtered up the line were treated with total disdain. Over this time I have repeated the phrase "I do not get my electricity from British Gas" to countless people. I told both Rebecca and David in Credit Control this numerous times but at no time did ANYONE stand back and take a look at this and think that POSSIBLY that the person on the end of the phone was either a complete loony or he may possibly have a point and maybe we should investigate. Your heartless and cruel responses made me feel that I was being regarded as a liar who was trying to get out of paying. The health of both myself and my fiancee have suffered badly as has our personal relationship. Credit Control must take a great deal of the blame as they failed to act on the numerous phone calls I made to try and resolve this problem.

Over the past four months my fiancee and I have suffered from the most incredible stress and strain. We have also incurred a substantial solicitors bill during this time as we knew we were right, being in possession of all the facts, as indeed, you were and we ran up a colossal telephone bill as most calls were not made on the free phone number, despite on one occasion asking the aforementioned Rebecca to ring me back to save my phone bill she replied "we don't ring back, and in any case, this is a freephone call." She would not listen to me when I said I repeated the number I had called and carried on blindly repeating that I would have to pay the bill otherwise they would cut me off.

Over the past few months I calculate that I have spent over 35 man hours on the phone, to Npower, British Gas and ENRON. I have spent some 10 hours writing letters to ENRON and Btitish Gas stating my case. If I value my time at a conservative estimate of £6.00 per hour then the amount of time I have spent away from trying to run a business is 45 hours X £6.00 which equals £270.00. Add to this postage which amounts to over £5.00; the cost of telephone calls which amount to well over £20.00, PLUS my solicitors' bill of £35.25 I get a grand total of £330.25. I fully appreciate that your good self probably earns this per minute but to me it represents a bloody good chunk of my income! This figure does not include any amount for the stress both my fiancee and I have suffered at the hands of British Gas, especially when dealing with the extreme heartlessness of your credit control department who have probably been thrown out of the Gestapo for cruelty. I have always considered myself to be a quite calm, mild mannered individual but during my dealings with your company I have resorted to sending abusive letters and faxes as well as SHOUTING down the phone desperately trying to make you see that my electricity came from a different source as my nerves have become more and more frayed. Despite furnishing you with the correct MPAN number and correct serial number of the meter and telling you there was no meter in No.16 Town Street I have been made out all the way along to be a liar. I pity any poor pensioner in the same position as I have been, having to deal with a credit control department that refuses to believe that a customer could possibly be right ("We don't make mistakes - the bill must be paid). As a struggling small business we would have found it very hard to pay the bill off as well as continuing to pay Yorkshire Electricity and trying to claim money back from them. Your refusal to talk to Y.E./Npower is absolutely disgraceful. It seems to me that you can send bills out willy-nilly and then expect we, the poor customer, to sort it out while you sit back raking in fat profits. Again I go back to some poor pensioner trying to make ends meet having a threatening letter from you drop through the door and than having to pay you off as well as their legitimate supplier.

The ONLY person at either British Gas or ENRON who has EVER realised there were two sides to the problem has been Dave King who, having finally admitted my electricity supplier is Npower will now have either been sacked or will be in charge of litter picking in the car park! Had I not, by pure chance, happened on this man, I would now probably been trying to run a business without electricity !!!!!

Your customer relations leave a lot to be desired - Michelle at ENRON who failed to record the correct account details supplied by Y.E. which would have prevented this shambles from occurring originally; Kerry Walters COMPLETELY ignoring the energywatch letter as though they were lying too; Rebecca and David from Credit Control who are quite frightening in their coldness, heartlessness and arrogance; Suzanna who seemingly couldn't be arsed to put a hold on the account properly which resulted in a visit from two intellectuals from Legal & Trade who left yet another threatening letter; Matthew Bateman who can send letters out but is FAR too arrogant to speak to the very people he is threatening and the "front line staff" who perform as automatons and can only deal with items that are on their checklist and cannot deal with anything else and are totally unable to pass customers on to anyone but an immediate supervisor who is as totally ineffective

I now come to the letter I have received from Dave King! It is dated 18 December 2003 and refers to the energywatch complaint registration dated 16 October 2003 - some two months later. The sentence "As a gesture of goodwill I have arranged for a cheque for the sum of £50 to be sent to you. This should be with you within you the next ten working days". Letter dated 18-12-03 - cheque arrived 16-01-04. Please send me an application form for employment as I would like to work for a company who only work 10 days between 18-12-03 and 16-01-04.

This sums up perfectly the shoddy attitude that British Gas have displayed throughout this farce.

Given the fact that my solicitors' bill is £35.25, it leaves a grand total of £14.75! If we assume this all kicked off as late as 1st September, there have been a total of 109 days - your generous payout of £14.75 amounts to a staggeringly generous sum of 13.5 pence per day. I was so frightened to cash the cheque in case British Gas shares plummeted and the stock market suffered a collapse to rival Black Monday I sent the cheque back!

Just for good measure, I received a phone call from British Gas last Thursday. A jolly little voice on the other end informed me that he saw from his records that we were being supplied with electricity by another supplier and had we considered moving to British Gas? I informed him that we had indeed considered that option some four + years ago but we would be staying with our current supplier even after hell has frozen over. You will make arrangements to have my details either removed totally from your database or my details are flagged in such a way that any other chirpy little soul who has the misfortune to make an unsolicited phone call will be subjected to a rather obnoxious reply. Your records will also show I have now moved my gas supplier and the appropriate record in your gas database should also be removed or amended to show that a nutter lurks on the other end of the phone and he is best left totally undisturbed!

This letter has been compiled with the sole purpose of it landing on the desk of Sir Roy Gardener (hence the personal address at the start of this letter!). Whilst realising Sir Roy probably has numerous directorships and most of his week will be taken up writing letters of appeal to the FA about yet another perceived injustice at Old Trafford and his time at British Gas amounts to no more than a few hours a month, I have not spent the time for this letter to be passed down the line to some minion who will trot out all the usual company lines. I have taken many hours to write this to Sir Roy and I expect a reply from the same Sir Roy. ANY LETTER SIGNED "PP" WILL BE RETURNED AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE RETURNED UNTIL THE AFOREMENTIONED SIR ROY GARDENER HAS THE COURTESY TO REPLY. I DO hope I have made myself clear!!!!!

£50 goodwill gesture - think again!"

Yours bloody angrily