Court Decision.

Episode 4.

The Irresistible Appeal of British Gas. Almost! (Excludes the MP Angus Brendan MacNeil.)

This Episode concerns a formal British Gas Appeal to Ombudsman Services: Energy requesting it stop an Investigation. Before considering this document, however, it is perhaps worth taking a closer look at Ombudsman Services: Energy.

According to the mandatory complaints procedure of all energy suppliers, any complaint must begin with the customer contacting his/her supplier. The supplier then has a maximum of eight weeks to resolve the complaint before issuing a “Deadlock Letter” and thereafter directing the complainer to contact Ombudsman Services: Energy. This is a statutory requirement.

If a “Deadlock Letter” is issued and Ombudsman Services: Energy is asked to become involved, its role is to provide a non-partisan adjudication service to both parties. When it agrees to investigate a complaint it immediately requests a £334.00 investigation fee from the energy supplier, although every energy supplier also pays an annual fee to Ombudsman Services: Energy which is how this private company is funded. Yes you read that correctly! This independent, non-partisan, limited liability company provides an arbitration service which is funded by the very energy suppliers it was created to investigate

In Episode 1 we alluded to the "statutory complaints procedure" when we revealed that British Gas is legally required to direct customers to Ombudsman Services: Energy if a complaint cannot be resolved. The following Appeal proffered to Ombudsman Services: Energy with the specified aim of convincing that organisation to discontinue an Investigation into the "inaccurate" information it had provided to a customer, was written almost 4 years after British Gas first informed me (in writing) I should contact Ombudsman Services since it (British Gas) could not resolve my complaint.

This Appeal, was proffered with the stated intent of convincing Ombudsman Services: Energy to discontinue an investigation. We know it was intended to mislead because it contains: “clear and demonstrable falsehoods which British Gas forwarded to Ombudsman Services: Energy with the mendacious, and successful, attempt of stopping a legitimate investigation…”*

Hi,

 Please see dispute below sent through Peppermint Portal:

Good morning,

I would like to request that the attached case for 01388932-01 – Mr McPherson is withdrawn and a refund provided. The grounds for my request are that the complaint is OTOR as it’s regarding policy and procedure.

 The customer’s complaint is:

• Mr McPherson lives on a Scottish island where no mains gas is available.

 • He has a propane gas supply and so do his neighbours. • Mr McPherson has spoken to his neighbours and believes he’s paying around 30% more for his gas supply.

• BG believes this is a matter of policy as the Ombudsman website states that only regular mains gas supplies will be investigated.

• As the issue is relating to policy, we believe the complaint is outside the Ombudsman’s terms of reference. We dispute this on the following grounds:

• This complaint is regarding a policy regarding a propane gas supply and has been explained to Mr McPherson on numerous occasions.

• BG believes this complaint is OTOR as its regarding policy and procedure and the customer has been advised the complaint is not something either BG or the Ombudsman can help him with. Please consider the points we’ve raised as we believe the complaint is regarding policy and procedure and as such should not be investigated by the Ombudsman.

 Thanks Kate Freeman

British Gas | Customer Relations | Chandler's Ford Tel: 07789 573 935 Email: kate.freeman1@britishgas.co.uk

At the time of writing, Kate Freeman was a Data Analyst at British Gas Trading Limited. Previously she had been a Senior Customer Manager.

 Prior to looking at the Appeal, let's have a look at the prefacing quote. 

As all of this Blog’s savvy readers will have noticed, that quote appears to be in blatant violation of the very restraints placed upon what I can and cannot incorporate into each Episode - and which I promised to adhere to. So, you must be thinking: how on earth does the inclusion of that quote comply with the Court's Orders? Didn't The Court Interdict him from “defaming” either British Gas or its counsel by referring to them as, or implying that they were, pathological liars or fraudsters? Yet the above quote would appear to do exactly that! 

Fortunately, the words are not mine: They are from from a January 2018 letter written by Angus Brendan MacNeil MP and forwarded to Ofgem. The letter also contained the following assertion from the clearly concerned, Member of Parliament:

     

    

  "...Centrica's mendacity regarding its dealings with both Ofegm 

      

    and my constituents is clear and demonstrable..."

Analysis of the Appeal revealing why it so angered the MP for the Western Isles, that he labelled it “mendacious”.

Point 1. The area in which I live, has a Piped Propane Gas Network as British Gas clearly acknowledged 4 years previously (cf. Episode 1).

Point 2. British Gas assured me in early 2013 (cf. Episode 1) that my designated status was that of a “Piped Propane” customer. Omitting the “Piped” four years later was designed to mislead the Appeal’s recipient. It worked: Ombudsman Services: Energy Senior Investigator, Anthony Lyon assumed I was a “bottled gas” user which is why, he advised, the investigation was stopped.

Point 3. British Gas had signed an agreement with the then Trade and Industry Minister (Michael Heseltine) that “Propane Estate” customers would be treated on the same contractual terms as its “Network” customers. These terms mean that British Gas is legally obliged to direct any unresolved complaints from Piped Estate customers to Ombudsman Services: Energy.

Point 4. British Gas knew the complaint was not “outside the Ombudsman’s terms of reference”.

Point 5. That statement is probatively dishonest. British Gas never “explained” any such thing. If it had done, it would have been in violation of the Fraud Act 2006 (The communication was from a company based in England to another, also based in England). To declaim, falsely, to Ombudsman Services: Energy, it did so, therefore, is in clear violation of the same Law.

Point 6. Not only had British Gas never advised me that Ombudsman Services: Energy could not “help”, on the contrary, it had advised me on numerous occasions to seek “help from the Ombudsman” – as indeed it is required to do by law. Advising Ombudsman Services: Energy otherwise was, as the Member of Parliament for the Western Isles, clearly implies: false, dishonest, wilfully misleading and, therefore, necessarily in violation of Law.

Let’s end with some "fair comment" based on the above Appeal and the description of it by a clearly furious, Angus MacNeil MP:

Is it not simply shocking - and the MP for the Western Isles clearly thinks so - that a giant energy company, which has around half of all UK households as its customers, would actually deceive Ombudsman Services: Energy into discontinuing an Investigation of a complaint that British Gas had withheld a specific tariff from one of his constituents in order to save (according to British Gas' own figures), the grand total of £1545.62?

Really, the eye-watering sum of £1545.62! Are we being asked to believe that British Gas on November 25 2016, was so desperate for £1545.62 that it considered forwarding dishonest information in a “mendacious Appeal” to Ombudsman Services: Energy worth the risk of getting caught "mendaciously" deceiving Ombudsman Services? Seriously! Oh, I'm forgetting: there was the further massive sum of the £344 Investigation Fee to consider.

But if we are genuinely being asked to believe that, perhaps British Gas would be kind enough to explain why it is now spending multiples of that amount on outside legal counsel in an attempt to have the Scottish Courts assist it in keeping its "mendacity" secret by shutting down this Blog! Or why it has never apologised to "Ombudsman Services: Energy for its "mistake"! It couldn’t possibly be that there was somehow more than the huge sum of £1545.62 plus £344 at stake?

Surely?

                                         Next Week:

 Is informing customers over a period of months that "Sainsbury's Energy doesn't deliver gas to their area" evidence of a "business policy"?

Or was it, as British Gas subsequently claimed, simply a series of mistakes? 

Hint: The MP for the Western Isles calculates that such a series of "mistakes" would have required the customer to have exceeded odds of "1.3 billion to one" to have been unintentionally misled on one single issue on so many occasions!