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British Gas PAYG Topup Big FAIL! (AGAIN)
I’ve already blogged about the British Gas IE9 Farce, where you could only use IE 6,7,8 to topup and they hadn’t taken into account the IE9 update. The blog post has got somewhere in the region of 3,000+ hits all on search terms which clearly indicate that a lot of people are being caused grief. I would be surprised if this was even a quarter of the people having problems.
Caution: Angry ranting blog post ahead.
About four months ago I had another card fail to credit the meter after I had put £20 on the card, I was promised by a surprisingly polite and helpful telephone lady that the £20 would be credited to card via the online top up message (you have to download messages and then put the card in the meter).
No refund yet.
Today with card number EIGHT, yes shockingly I have been through SEVEN other faulty cards AND on my SECOND meter) took £20 of my money AND didn’t credit the meter. So that’s twice it’s happened now in four weeks. That’s a total of £40 that British Gas have taken from me without providing anything in return.
Taking money without giving anything in return = THEFT.
I know that it’s not me, my PC or my card that is the problem as the electricity top up worked fine after registering the key. I also have a receipt for the £20 payment.
So yet again I was on the phone to the PAYG helpline, I must have been lucky last time I called, this time the operator was absolutely useless. To be blunt and brutally honest – somewhere, some village is missing their idiot.
Tomorrow an engineer is coming out “to examine the problem”… due between 8am and 1pm. I think it’s quite obvious that the problem is British Gas are a bunch of useless f**kwits.
Update: Apparently the engineers were busy this morning and my appointment was cancelled – no one told me! I rang up and had a “discussion” with a member of staff from the PAYG team – should be getting my £40 sent to the card and £20 compensation – weirdly I have to visit the top up shop 3 times adding a pound on each time for the money/message to be sent. Do I think this’ll all happen as promised – I’m not hopeful.
thanks for resolving british gas IE 9 topup problem for me.
I have a property, some distance from me, which I am renovating to make habitable. During the few months I have had it I have had problems every time I want to top up the electric. I invariabley have to ring British Gas on the number on the key who gives usual speil for 2 minutes then give another number to ring. Ring other number and same speil so using up more credit on my mobile. Finally after 17 mins on my mobile I am told to go and get a new key at a shop 1/12 miles from me but……….. not for one hour!!!! And all this whilst sitting in the growing dark in my car!!! And I am a pensioner!!!
I know exactly how to deal with British Gas – I shall now be contacting NPower to be my supply company.
I don’t envy you that at all.. thanks for sharing. Thankfully my electricity key has always worked. Which caused much fun when I was ringing them and they were telling me my computer was faulty (wrong) and refused to accept that the fact I could top up electricity but not gas meant my computer could hardly be faulty!
British Gas expected me to walk about a mile to a garage to top up my gas card when I had one despite me explaining I would struggle as I am recovering from a broken leg… the staff member ignored my comments and carried one with the script she was reading from and I got the one hour comment so I said “It’ll take me that long to walk there as I’m recovering from a broken leg. ” She then said “Good luck” and terminated the call. British Gas are utterly hopeless and have no sense of customer care or service…
Elliott
hi i iedwas also told my computer was the problem by british gas although my electric key worked fine the gas card top up thing didn’t at this time i had recently reinstalled my windows on my machine and told british gas and the man said see because of that theres a problem with my pc….. well actually i dont have any hardware issues with my system i had a virus that wiped me out that was allso making it a software issue that i fixed.
You probably find that when you reinstalled windows it gave you Internet Explorer 9 which when I last checked wouldn’t work (only with 6,7 and 8). Hence why I came up with my suggestion of using a Firefox extension to fake it… you can find out more about this on my post British Gas Topup cards and Internet Explorer.
Good luck
Elliott