£5 charge for late paying British Gas customers

Tim Wolfenden, Product Strategy Manager at uSwitch.com, the UK’s leading switching and comparison service comments on British Gas’ policy to charge customers £5 for late payment.

“British Gas has obviously made its new years resolution to squeeze even more money out of its beleaguered customers. It (British Gas) currently has more than 10 million gas customers and to give you an example, if just 10% (1 in 10) of those customers fall foul of the fine then it will swell Centrica’s coffers by another £5 million per year.

“Centrica is a multi billion pound organisation that claims 50% of all residential gas customers in the UK, for them to instigate such a charge is wholly unacceptable when none of the other energy providers in the UK has felt obliged to.

“British Gas has commented that this is a reflection of the cost of chasing late payments, however, if it reduced its prices to a level that reflects the current state of the energy market, then customers would have to find less money to meet their extortionate bill in the first place, giving British Gas less to chase.

“Customers should not be settling for this new fine - many customers can make a saving by switching away from British Gas, and someone who has never switched energy providers could save up to £325 per year or put another way, it is equivalent to 65 late payment charges!”

“The number of people struggling to pay their bills and those falling victim to fuel poverty continues to escalate - 6.4 million are struggling with rising energy costs, up 765,000 since March 2006, while the number of households in fuel poverty stands at 5.8 million.” This additional charge could be enough to push thousands more customers towards fuel poverty,” Mr Wolfenden added.