UK Gas suppliers and their lies

UK gas suppliers are businesses that you would imagine are very well controlled and efficient in their manner of supplying customer with gas for their boilers, cookers and other appliances, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The gas suppliers of the United Kingdom lie and cheat on a regular basis so their customers believe they are getting a better deal than they really are, but how do they do it?

Firstly and most importantly they lie about prices on their adverts. I am sure you have seen the adverts which advise that the gas supplier has lowered their prices and want customers to move over to them. The truth behind it is they raise their prices up to six or seven times in a year and only make a small reduction once for advertising purposes....overall this means the actual price could of been raised upwards of 15% through the year.

Secondly is the issues you have when you try to ring the gas supplier in the case of an emergency. When you ring a gas supplier you tend to end up on hold for ten or twenty minutes at a time, this is unless they have pulled out one of their secret tricks to keep their service levels within targets. To keep their service levels within target some of the gas suppliers do the following...

Automatically put you through to National Grid gas emergency services so they don't have to handle the call saving their agreed service levels - Scottish Power

Every option you choose except one tells you they are closed at weekends when they are open, and when you do get through they put you through to National Grid gas emergency services - British Gas

Now for those who are not aware National Grid are the gas suppliers to the suppliers, in other words National Grid take the gas from the source and move it around the UK in its network of pipes to peoples homes. National Grid owns your gas meter and will work on any gas pipes and the meter itself if there is an issue BUT National Grid cannot work on your internal pipework, your appliances such as your boiler or put money on your pre payment meter.

A third lie that gas suppliers from Britain use is the stand alone service products they offer where they will send an engineer to come and mend your gas appliances when they fail. Recently a British Gas advert showed that in eight out of ten cases they would have someone out the same day to look at your appliance, but there is something they didn't say.

What they don't tell you is that if you have managed to realise they are open and not closed as the phone system tells you, and you have waited patiently to get to the front of the queue....yes you will get someone out the same day but they will just poke around find out what is wrong then book in another engineer to come out after a few days or even later in the week to fix the problem. This is all a publicity stunt to say they get engineers out when an appliance breaks, which they do but not with the plan of fixing it on the day which as a consumer you are expecting.

Summary

These are just a few of the different ways that gas suppliers show they are providing a good service when in fact they are not, even though they raise their prices every few months or so.

It is important to note that the National Grid gas emergency service does provide a great service to those who have genuine gas emergencies by getting an engineer out with one to four hours dependant on how dangerous the situation may be.