British Gas paid me £38,000 by mistake, and I can’t give it back — SkimNews
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- British Gas accidentally paid DT in Sale £38,611.59 instead of his £300 feed-in tariff claim on 14 May, after an agent entered the wrong meter reading, and the erroneous sum sat in his account for nearly two months because the company had no procedure to reclaim it
- British Gas finally reclaimed the £38,611.59 on 14 July, but did not confirm receipt with DT and initially offered only £500 compensation for his months of repeated calls and emails
- British Gas eventually paid the £300 FIT payment two months late, but underestimated it by £2, requiring further complaint from DT
- British Gas pursued JG in Berkshire for phantom gas bills after he had his gas meter removed in November 2024, reporting six missed payments and an £833 default to credit reference agencies for a supply that no longer existed
- British Gas removed the six missed payments from JG's credit record after he complained, but the £833 default marker remained until the press intervened, after which the company replaced it with a 32p charge and offered £150 in goodwill
- The column notes that failing to report erroneously paid funds can be a criminal offence under the Theft Act carrying up to 10 years in prison, and parallels a Yorkshire Water case where £6,800 was misdirected to a customer
- The Guardian's Consumer Champions column argues utilities are highly effective at pursuing customer debts but lack any process to check or recover obviously erroneous credits
Why it matters: British Gas shows it can move £38,611 out the door in a single keystroke yet cannot retrieve it for two months, while simultaneously destroying a customer's credit rating over invented debts on a disconnected meter — exposing a systemic gap where utility firms have robust debt-collection machinery but no equivalent process for self-correcting their own errors.
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