Elliott Rodgers

Given everything that has happened so far you would think someone, somewhere in British Gas would decide something along the lines of “We really need to make sure this appointment with Mr Rodgers happens correctly or he is going to be really f****d off if we balls it up again. “

Seriously you really wouldn’t think they would want to fail again?

They failed. Appointment slot was 1pm – 5pm. According to one member of staff on the phone, my apoointment was sent to the engineer at 3pm and he is on his way to my flat (on a seperate note why wasn’t the engineer told earlier about the appointment? Why do they expect customers to wait in their homes when an engineer hasn’t even been told about the job?!

1735: While typing this post I had another call from a different member of staff who says the engineer is coming from home and lives in the HP area (an absolutely massive area) and is on his way… She is calling me back with an ETA….
1845 No call back and no sign of an engineer…
1910 Engineer has finally arrived, seems polite and nice enough.
1920 In goes meter number THREE, I will be getting a new card soon – card number EIGHT! Engineer has just told me that he was told about this job half an hour ago! So that’s totally different from either of the women who spoke to me on the phone!!

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.

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.