British Gas Topup cards and Internet Explorer

Mar 27th, 2011 By Elliott
35 Comments

British Gas Topup cards and Internet Explorer

These methods don’t currently work with Firefox 5 – the IE tab plugins appear incompatiable with FF5

British Gas recently transfered me onto topup meters….

While I’ve been going through the whole broken leg, hospital, operation, high as a kite on painkillers, time in wheelchair, crutches, more painkillers etc I missed paying some bills including to British Gas. Fairly understandable when you have to crawl on your hands and knees to use the toilet that some things slip your mind. There was a small moment of happiness when I found out that I could top up over the internet. The first meter was faulty so they had to come out and fit another one. Ready to go. When yet another top up arrived in the post (count now stands at five cards and two card readers from BG). Got Firefox open went to the British Gas website, signed up, and then….

we’ve checked your browser. To use this service right now, please switch to a computer that has Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, 7.0 or 8.0. If you need further help, call us on 0800 107 0188.

My first reaction was “What the f**k?! It’s 2011… am I in a twisted Life On Mars style time warp into the Browser Wars or something?!”

Well this wasn’t such a problem since about a week ago when I had ~~low finances~~ no money to top up with however since then there’s been an update to Internet Explorer anyone who works, spends any time on or hangs out on the internet will know that Internet Explorer 9 is out … tens of thousands of people have updated, lots of them would have been British Gas customers who wanted (or have to) top up online. This somewhat spoilt the sheer joy of not having to walk a mile or so up and down a hill to the shop/garage to top up given I’m still in pain with my leg and using a crutch.

The solution to topping up with British Gas if you have Internet Explorer 9 actually turned out somewhat ironically to use Firefox… I know that sounds mad but bear with me. This is how it works. Firefox can use add ons, there are thousands of these out there. Some of these are specifically designed to use Internet Explorer inside Firefox. This is how you solve the problem.

The best add on I have found so far that does this is IE Tab Plus – you can get this by going to this web address – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ie-tab-plus-ff-36/. Once you have installed IE Tab Plus – open up the British Gas Topup Site. BEFORE you do anything else right click on one side and you will get an option View Page in IE Tab Plus, hover over this and select Switch Rendering Engine. The little flame icon on the tab will change to an IE.

Bear in mind that when you update Firefox some plugins may not work with the updated version. There are however a lot of “IE Tab” add ons though so you may need to swap and use a different plugin.

Now sign on as normal and top up. Easy uh?

Update: Spoke to a really nice, polite and helpful lady at British Gas Top Up Helpline today and shared the solution I had found and to have a look at this blog post… judging by my hit counter the word has gone round British Gas Offices in Staines Middlesex so hopefully some more people wont have fustrations and be unable to top up online.

Lots of people are visiting due to my sharing my discovery to solve this problem… I like helping people, it’s in my nature. Let me know if this helps you, in the comments.

If you want to say thank you, the Thank You Page tells you how.