Company claims technical issue and says it has texted customers with other means of submitting readings
Money expert Martin Lewis and others have warned householders that they need to submit meter readings to their energy provider today, to ensure that they are not charged more for any energy they have used before tomorrow’s massive increases in gas and electricity prices.
If you are a British Gas customer, that is not going to be easy, as the site for submitting readings is offline. Anyone trying to submit by signing into their customer account is receiving this message:
The link provided in blue text to submit a meter reading for those unable to sign in is also offline:
A spokesperson for British Gas attributed the site’s unavailability to an unspecified technical error and told Skwawkbox that the company had texted customers with an alternative way to submit readings. If you are a British Gas customer and have not received a text, contact the company’s customer services to ensure you receive one.
Skwawkbox view:
The government has done little to help people cope with their bills or to prevent energy companies, who continue to make massive profits, from hitting customers with crippling price increases. Fuel poverty and outright poverty are mushrooming while both the Tories and Labour do little more than sit on their hands.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
It took about five minutes for the site to load, for me, but we got there in the end. That was about 09.30.
You would think with the profits they’re making, they could do much, much better than that.
Shoddy Customer Care is more likely to happen in companies that have shoddy Fire and Rehire policies. British Gas is not alone.
Starmer ‘talks the talk’, but doesn’t take a step to help the victims.
We should have strategic industrys in common with many countries,even rabid neo liberal countries recognise that some industry’s are far too important for the whims of directors or shareholders to decide on the destination of economys..I have always recognised the importance of Business in dynamic economics but this unacceptable face of industry cannot carry on without taking the public into acount.Like many things though I feel we are just pissing in the wind no matter how much common sense we ask for.Even more so for the elderly like many of us who have seen so many mistakes in government over seventy years and nothing changes.other than the first socialist leader of the Labour party Jeremy Corbyn and look what happened to him.and so many comrades who were destroyed by the same stupid actions by the same type who are now looking for another world war and I don’t understand how the economic ganging up on a fellow neo liberal like Putin who has clearly fallen out with the new world order that they are now confident in admitting…One World Government “unelected and rabid..
I think I give up and just finish my days in the Mekong delta Cambodia and pray for a better world for the working class.
I have not had the email from British Gas……Technical issues ? A very convenient excuse…
Unfortunately, me dad’s with BG.
I logged into his account earlier to give a reading…Wasn’t getting anywhere, so I hit the chat box thing, told the ‘bot’ the problem (Can’t give meter readings) and got through to a customer assistant who put them in for me.
If anyone goes down this route, I suggest you save the transcript on your hard drive in case the try to stiff you for the full whack.
If you’re ‘phoning in – If at all possible – Make sure you record the conversation.
Gotta say, I’m dreading to think what’s gonna happen to millions of people soon enough. The toerags best get something done PDQ, because a lot of people around my way are getting very…Shall we say, ‘concerned’.?!
If they don’t, there’s gonna be a helluva lot of ‘discontent’ before the next hike’s due in October.
Add Scottish Power to your list. Probably all the conniving CNUTS!
https://ibb.co/R4HZnsd
I have managed to send my Scot Power readings through the app, try that, if all else fails take a picture of your readings. Don’t get done!
Best email that picture to yourself to get a date stamp on it. 👍
Yes, that is a good idea, I thought of a newspaper, but then I realised most here, like me, will not have MSM filth in their homes. Could also email it to their customer services, it will eventually get through.
Wonder if this could be a bit of Russian Sabotage, or are they all frantically switching to Rublelussion payments?
TalkTalk also down, yeah, I think this is the start of the Rublelution!
https://ibb.co/ZxyNrQb
Same at EDF energy,can’t submit readings online due to ‘ technical difficulties’.
EDF two days ago will only adjust DD with a meter reading from the 14th. Good practice is dead. Just rip off merchants left.
Hardly surprising, in fairness.
Not people’s fault for wanting to do it at the last minute so the thieving utility companies don’t rinse people for as much as they can.
And what’ll happen if they do? They’ll get a poxy fine…which won’t be paid out of shareholders’ dividends, but by the poor sods already being bled white on pre-pay meter tariffs.
And nobody will do budgie for it. No. They’ll get a knighthood and shoehorned in as chief exec of another blue chip or council or what have ya…Still on megabucks, such is the money-go-round of corporatism
If keef won’t ameliorate people’s financial woes, renationalise (we already know he won’t) then the very least he should do is divert shareholders’ divvys to pay company fines and jail those who allow it to happen.
But keef is the party of business, so expect less than fook-all from the blockhead.
Indeed. The UK is no different to the USA in this respect. Its large donors who count rather than voters and the Party Members who do all the donkey work. Why anyone should vote for any of these parties in hock to corporate donors, never mind do any campaigning for them, is a no brainer
There is a form you can fill out online on the British Gas website. You will need both your Electricity account number (mine is 13 digits long – all numbers) and your Gas account number (mine is 10 digits long – all numbers) as well as your meter readings, title, first name, surname, postal address, phone number and email address.
I was forced to be a BG “customer” when my provider went bust.Have complained about this as I have no desire to be with them. So much for privatisation offering choice! No explanation for this diversion from Tory policy.Have received no text and will now try every avenue to get a response from them .Is it me or are all privatisations toral shit? Water,Rail,phones,,Utilities. All shit and far more expensive.We need an effing Revolution!
As a former employee of the first privatised utility the short answer is yes.
I recall an on site street discussion with a couple of guys from the old East Midlands Electricity Board (EMEB) back in the eighties comparing notes with them as they were just about to be privatised (or, to be more accurate, piratised). They were going through exactly the same processes as we had gone through prior to our earlier (1984) privatisation.
They told us that EMEB now stood for Eight Men, Eleven Bosses. Which just about sums it all up. More chiefs than indians.
The aftermath in all cases was an initial cull of all managers who knew their arse from a hole in the ground followed by successive rounds of removing anyone with any experience, expertise, and knowledge (because the only valid skill is management according to the managerialist movement) to be replaced by gormless interchangeable management studies graduates and malleable young ‘uns from the bus queue with no experience and no gumption whose only necessary qualification is to do what they are told without question and constantly take it up the arse.
When I left in 2014 after 35 years people starting out doing the job I was doing at the level I started out were on worse terms and conditions than I was in 1979 when I first started. Worse pay; worse pensions; worse working hours; worse working conditions; worse holidays; worse prospects.
The local Union branches even negotiated away the rights to the length of notice required of change of contract from 12 weeks down to 6 weeks. When challenged by members – one of them the Chair of a Branch who was kept out of the loop – as to what the Union had got in return for this concession the reply was:
“The goodwill of the local management.”
Now all you have is copers (to cope means to manage) rather than leaders. Producing outcomes which are less than the sum of the parts trying to reach the nirvana state of being able to do more and more with less and less until you can do everything with nothing.
And this is not just the privatised utilities. Its across every Western Corporate entity from private companies through to the public sector, local authorities, Government, voluntary/Third sector, NGO’s, NHS, Education, and political parties:
https://davehansell.substack.com/p/mandering-the-gerry?s=w
I got a text from them today inviting me to submit readings by replying directly to their text, which I did. It wasn’t a Do Not Reply number and it seemed kosher, though they haven’t as yet acknowledged receipt…
British Gas website seems not to be the only thing that has gone off-line. My comments on this website seem not to be getting accepted. Let’s see if this one is OK.
Let’s see if this works.
I was reading, earlier today, that the first decade of this century saw the US take $7 trillion in loans from China.
I wonder how much has been borrowed since then.
The link I really wanted to post does not get accepted.
You may find an interesting report if you go to The Grayzone website and look at the story entitled “US veteran who volunteered to fight for Ukraine describes ‘suicide mission'”.
As of March 2022, the US government’s total debt was over $30.2 trillion. China is second largest provider of capital, Japan being the first. But importantly acknowledge that the official explanation differenitates between intragovernmental debt and public debt. Intragovernmental debt is debt held within the U.S. by federal agencies and entities. It makes up about a fifth of total outstanding U.S. debt. The amount of ‘debt’/’borrowing’ with China, then, is possibly significantly more than the official account: it omits to include the billions$ that chinses billionaires (they’re ‘members’ of WEF too) provides and this money is unrevealed.
Convenient.
For them.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60938730.amp
There will be riots within six months. Big ones.
I’ve just read a comment from one Paul Lewis, who I presume is a Money Advisor, that if people on prepayment meters decide or indeed simply have no choice but to ‘self disconnect’, gas and electric meters continue ‘ticking’ running up £6.15 pw. Charging people who already have nothing £6.15 pw for doing without heating, light, nothing to cook with, etc.. Can this be true? Sadly, I am sure it can. Truly and utterly appalling.
If you have prepayment meters for gas and electricity, British Gas will charge a “standing charge” [It is their meter, not yours, so you are renting it]. The charge is 50p per day for electricity and 37p per day for gas, which is £6.09 per week.
If your meter isn’t prepayment the cheapest standing charge is around 63p per day – Scottish Power, I believe.
Money Saving expert is normally very good on best deals and how to avoid standing charges
Prepayment meters are very good for budgeting, they are very strict in that they cut you off if you dont feed them
A lot of people prefer that discipline rather than having credit
The secret is to average your consumption and pay the weekly amount from April onwards so uou build up credit on your meter to get you through winter
Up north you can be putting in £45 week in winter and £8 week in summer
Has anyone done the maths, are energy suppliers profiting from these massive hikes which most should have will have hedged against
At worst the pain should be shared between customers and suppliers in exceptional circumstances, if the maths had been done by any reputable regulator or think tank we would have this information
Their losses would be reduced and the pain inflicted on the poorest would be limited and offset by government
Follow the money the kleptocracy is taking the piss again