{"id":7438,"date":"2019-02-12T12:37:26","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T12:37:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/british-gas-prepayment-top-ups-hit-by-it-fault\/"},"modified":"2019-02-12T12:37:26","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T12:37:26","slug":"british-gas-prepayment-top-ups-hit-by-it-fault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/british-gas-prepayment-top-ups-hit-by-it-fault\/","title":{"rendered":"British Gas prepayment top-ups hit by IT fault"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div property=\"articleBody\">\n<figure class=\"media-landscape no-caption full-width lead\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>                <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"js-image-replace\" alt=\"Prepayment card meter\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/320\/cpsprodpb\/15091\/production\/_105616168_energymeter_getty.jpg\" width=\"976\" height=\"549\"\/><span class=\"off-screen\">Image copyright<\/span><br \/>\n                 <span class=\"story-image-copyright\">Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Customers have been struggling to top up their pay-as-you-go energy meters owing to a fault at British Gas.<\/p>\n<p>Those on prepayment meters have been unable to pay via the supplier&#8217;s website and app.<\/p>\n<p>The company &#8211; the largest supplier in the UK &#8211; has apologised and is encouraging those affected to call phone lines to top up.<\/p>\n<p>However, many are reporting long waits. Other customers are unable to check accounts owing to the website fault.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-46300669\" class=\"story-body__link\">British Gas owner to take \u00a370m hit from price cap<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-47133564\" class=\"story-body__link\">Energy prices to increase for millions as Ofgem raises cap<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Millions of people in the UK use prepayment meters, such as tenants and some who have missed payments in the past. Many will have an account with British Gas. <\/p>\n<p>They prepay for gas and electricity on a card, which allows an emergency credit of \u00a35 if the money runs out.<\/p>\n<p>Angry customers have described how they have been unable to load payments owing to the IT issues, and have faced long waits when trying an alternative method.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Couldn&#8217;t use the app or the website to try and top up and my gas is nearly depleted,&#8221; said one on website Down Detector. &#8220;Sort yourselves out. It is winter and people can&#8217;t top up their gas! Unacceptable!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On Twitter, customer Jody Greaves wrote: &#8220;Now just managed to top up after British Gas forced me into emergency. Absolute joke! 45 mins on phone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead\">Apology<\/h2>\n<p>A spokesman for Centrica, which owns British Gas, said: &#8220;Some of our customers have not been able to access their accounts with us due to maintenance of our systems.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We apologise to customers for the inconvenience and are working hard today to get our operation back to normal.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He said that prepayment meter customers could still top up on the phone or via any pay point location, often found in local shops.<\/p>\n<p>A report from energy regulator Ofgem last year suggested that British Gas was one of three suppliers with a much higher proportion of prepayment meters per head than the industry average. <\/p>\n<p>The regulator said <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-44518382\" class=\"story-body__link\">meters should be &#8220;an absolute last resort&#8221;<\/a> for recovering debt, and suppliers should be putting households onto repayment plans first.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-47213542\">Source<\/a> by <a href=\"\">[author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image copyright Getty Images Customers have been struggling to top up their pay-as-you-go energy meters owing to a fault at British Gas. Those on prepayment meters have been unable to pay via the supplier&#8217;s website and app. The company &#8211; the largest supplier in the UK &#8211; has apologised and is encouraging those affected to &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}