Property Landlord advice: British Gas laying down the Law!

By Steve Roulstone

I am not a lover of utility suppliers, mainly because they never seem to know how our Industry works and prove time and again, that they do not have a system that can deal with people moving on a frequent basis. I have seen STWA send out invoices for a few days between Tenants at three times the rate of the normal daily cost, heard staff at British Gas say “let’s turn the fax of today, we have enough paperwork to deal with” and famously (for me) told British Gas, “sorry if I have not pressed the right option, there isn’t one for ‘we do not know what we are doing’ ”

Visit out of the blue.

This time however, they have gone too far! An engineer turned up at a house we manage last week to change the meter because the Tenants were stated as not having paid the Gas Bill. Unbelievably that simple fact was wrong, as the Gas Bill had been paid and was up to date. But that did not stop the BG Employee changing the Tenants on to a pay as you go meter and also whilst at the property looking at the appliances.

Gas Fire turned off.

Mistake number two. Whilst there, without looking at the operation of the fire, he decided the fire was unsafe, disconnected it and labelled it as unfit for use. The Tenant, understandably, phoned us and asked us to explain why? We sent a qualified engineer round, who confirmed, as he had when he carried out the annual Landlords Gas Inspection less than four months earlier, that the fire was perfectly OK and that there was no need what so ever to turn it off.

Not the first time!

What amazed me about this was that our Gas engineer confirmed that this was not the first time he had heard of this and that the meter people employed by British Gas were not even qualified as Gas Engineers. Rather they were trained to carry out a ‘Visual Inspection’ and it seems on that basis only without any qualified reason; the appliance was labelled as dangerous. Rightly, our Gas engineer has sent his invoice to British Gas, as why should the Landlord pay for the mistake?

Liability.               

Now I know from experience that they are not the purveyors of all things good as they like to be perceived (especially from the TV ads) but you have to ask the question, since when have they been given the role of sending unqualified people in too houses to carry out unsolicited inspections? It frankly beggars belief but they must see themselves as the protectors of all things Gas related in Britain’s houses to go about giving their staff this kind of instruction.

Admission.

Now they have apologised for even getting involved in the first place as the Tenants had as stated paid their Gas Bill and the meter will be changed back again. As to whether they will pay for the engineer’s time to confirm all was well? Knowing British Gas I doubt it, but hey, somebody who matters might just read this and agree they should. Feel free to get in touch!

Motivation.

That just leaves us wondering why they should do this in the first place? I am afraid in my opinion I only have one thought as to why and that is to generate income through the repairs that appear without the ability to check correctly, would have been generated from this incident – why else? Forgive me if I am wrong, but why else should British Gas staff be condemning appliances (even though they are unqualified in the first place) during visits they are not even supposed to be making? If we had not known better, the result could well have been a call to a British Gas engineer to repair the fire and the result of that would have been an invoice.

Summary.

By all means call me cynical, but I believe this would probably have been the outcome of a visit to a property lived in by the house owner and the only reason this did not finish in this manner, is because British Gas would not have expected a third party to have knowledge through the Landlords inspection of the appliances and be able to call upon an engineer as we did. In other words it resulted from British Gas NOT understanding how the rental system works, but then I already know that.

Bad practise British Gas, Bad Practise!