Ah, British Gas. What a joy it is to recall the time, long ago, when they changed our meter because it had reached its replacement date. The new meter was fitted without any fuss, the van drove away.... and two months later we got a bill for tens of thousands of pounds.
It didn't take very long to figure out the mistake, convoluted though it was. They had taken the last-but-one (and naturally very high) recorded reading from our
old meter, and
subtracted the (naturally very low) reading from our
new meter (are you still with me?), and had come up with an upside-down figure that represented perhaps 30 years' worth of gas usage. Or, if you prefer, the cost of sending 30 years' worth of gas back up the pipe and back out into the North Sea.
Go away and check the figure on the old gas meter, I said. We can't, they replied, we've had to do this bill by hand. Why, I asked? Because our fitter tipped your old meter into the skip without taking a final reading, they said. But you still owe us the money.....
Laugh? I nearly went round and broke their windows. Stinky letter to the chief executive got it sorted. Cock-up on top of cock-up. The worst energy supplier I'd seen until the next one, which was Bulb. Which is another story, for another day....
BJ
