One of my "hats" is that of a Landlord for a house that is let out through an Agent to provide some income for a Registered Charity.
Our tenant of five years moved out a couple of weeks ago and one of my jobs was to have the PAYG BG electricity and gas meters replaced with smart PAYG/Credit meters. (The next tenant will be at liberty to choose payment method and supplier.
BG replaced both meters 3 days after I contacted them. No complaints there, and within hours the internal monitor and the on-line account I then created were spot on. I topped up online and ticked this job off as completed. WRONG
Earlier today tried to check the credit on the meters on-line - to save driving over to the house to check.
I could not get access to the account. On the main log-in screen my email address was not recognised and on an alternative log-in screen it returned, "Your email address does not look right"! OK it is a .org.uk address, but so what?
Spent 30 odd minutes on hold with BG to be told that when the account was set up - last week - it was set to a default paper billing account! And since that does not allow on-line access, my email address was unacceptable. Their Customer Services guy said he would make it paperless and all would be Ok after a couple of hours. And it was. Good.
BUT I had used the on-line account to top up the day after the meters were changed. And this evening (after a couple of hours) my email address was accepted, as it was by Customer Services earlier, without any passwords etc. So what if I was on paper billing and took ill and unable to use the top up cards at a post Office or corner shop and tried to top up on line? The alternative screen I used was for 3rd party top up and to get a receipt they wanted an email address, yet the one I gave, "did not look right"!
Not impressed with BG. At least their Customer Services guy knew straight away what the problem was. And I would have thought BG would prefer paperless to paper billing.
[rant mode off]
Clive