OT: British Gas refusing card payments

[Chris Hogg]

Had my gas bill this morning from British Gas. I normally pay immediately, using my credit card (Barclaycard), but BG is refusing both my credit card and my debit card, even though there's plenty of cash available in both. They seem to be offering only cash or cheque as payment methods, even though they allow me to go through the card details input sequence. Needless to say, the Help pages are of no help at all, and the telephone lines aren't open at weekends!

Anyone else having this problem, or is it just me?

[JNugent]

Not had that experience, but I pay British Gas as an online "payee" from my bank account. So it's coming straight out of the account (though under manual control).

[Jeff Gaines]

Are you hitting the two level security check introduced recently?

[Chris Hogg]

I don't think so. I've been expecting it for 18 months, and I've not seen it yet; AIUI it only gets asked for if paying by debit card and for which I have a PINsentry thingy, not credit card unless Barclaycard are also going to do it with the same PINsentry thingy, and I saw no request for a security check.

I suspect it's to force me to pay by direct debit!

[Fredxx]

I had this with my credit card, phoned the bank and while waiting in the queue a recorded message said that many transactions were being refused because the vendor wasn't up to date or something similar. I didn't bother to wait any further.

I was able to use my debit card, but that was with a different bank.

[Chris Hogg]

Sounds like a possibility in my case.

[Graham Harrison]

Two factor authentication comes in a number of forms but, so far, they've always started with the transaction being interrupted and a message telling me they want to send me a notification. They then present me with options as to how they want to send the notification. In one case an option was to the bank app on my phone, the most usual is a text to my phone, another is an email or, in one case, they say they'll phone me. In each case I get given a code number and have to enter that on the payment screen. They will only send to my registered phone/email/app/whatever.

But it doesn't happen with every transaction. It seems to depend on the company I'm buying from with some always going through and others requiring authentication. The value of the transaction seems to have some relevance in some cases (e.g. I've never had to authenticate with Amazon until a recent single purchase over £300). There is also the ability to put some companies on your "white list" (the name varies) - effectively you're saying "I trust them - don't ask for further confirmation again" (I suspect there may still be the odd occasion even with white list vendors).

Then there are non-UK vendors. I sometimes buy from the USA and, so far, I've never been asked for two-factor with US vendors. But then the US banking system is so far behind the rest of the world that doesn't surprise me!

[alan_m]

I do wonder how many times the bank system goes down.

With one of the regular DD payments I have set up the recipient often emails to inform me that the payment did not go through when presented and further attempts will be made in the following days. With the absence of further emails I assume that on subsequent attempts the payment is made.

Perhaps other payments by the same method are also unsuccessful on the first attempt but the recipient makes further attempts at different times and doesn't bother inform me unless all attempts fail.

[Steve Walker]

Tesco have started putting up a message to approve the transaction in the TSB banking app. Going into the app lists the accounts, but above them is an "Approve transactions" option, which lists any outstanding payment requests for approval.

[billy bookcase]

British Gas are now absolute rubbish. Run by amateurs

I rejoined them after my other supplier went bust.

The website is rubbish. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.

Having eventually logged in successfully on one occasion, instead of loading the account page there was a banner "You need to upgrade your browser" this on a regularly updated Windows 10 machine kept specially for fussy websites. British Gas !

You almost get the impression they don't actually want people to pay so they lose track of how much they owe.

The only advice is keep trying

Last month I managed a one off payment by CC as they'd screwed up the DD The payment goes via worldly but works eventually

bb

[Jethro_uk]

As IT manager (infrastructure and e-commerce) the last few weeks in my new job have been spent overseeing the DevOps team (with ceremonies and sprints, who knew ?) getting ready for the switch.

It's been known of for a long time, so not really sure why vendors aren't up to date ...

[Mike Rogers]

I paid by CC yesterday with no problem. Mike