Wondering how to pay British Gas "New Energy" by BACS transfer

They moved my (dual fuel) supply over to their new system

once logged in, I can pay by plastic, or google pay

The giro slip on the bill does show a sort code plus the A99999999 customer reference, but nothing that's a normal 8 digit account number for them

If you're logging in to your British Gas account then you are half way to asking British Gas to draw the money on your behalf.

I don't trust them enough to keep my bank details and then helping themselves when they wish.

British Gas once overcharged me by a large amount on a property which I don't live in (and which hardly uses any gas). It took forever and many phone calls to get the overpaid money back.

Not when I've *never* had a direct debit with them.

Same for my Natwest credit card.

I'm not 100% sure but I think the account field is 8 or 10 zeroes for payment details, and it works off the sort code and refeence.

Owain

So it's not on the bill, in the bit marked "Ways to pay" ??

Yes, but I don't generally go around sending money to accounts that I

Well, no, but I was pointing out that an account number isn't necessarily required for some payments.

Owain

Nor did I, with lots of justification for not trusting them - Do what I did, move to a supplier you can trust.

Octopus seem to be very trustworthy, referral link here - https://share.octopus.energy/jade-light-417

I rang them up when they changed my account number and they refused to give me their account number for a bank transfer. They said it was "impossible". So I contacted them via their chat line, which communicates with a real human:

This may well be the same for you; I don't know what the "New Energy" system is, but my account number begins with an A.

You could always make a (possibly small) payment to that number and check that your account has been credited. You can do this by ringing

Thanks for those details. This seems to be a widespread problem but, for some reason, it's not much reported. I did find this article in the Sun from last October.

"British Gas has made another perverse change to the way customers pay energy bills, The Sun can reveal. It comes just weeks after the supplier quietly ditched giro slips from thousands of customer bills. "Now British Gas has also removed its bank account number and sort code from the bottom of customer bills. "It means that thousands of customers might be duped into thinking that they no longer have the option to settle their bill by bank transfer using faster payments."

Rather coyly the newspaper article doesn't print the sort code and account number either.

A British Gas Spokesperson said: "The vast majority of our customers "pay their bills successfully by direct debit, card or cheque. "Any customer who wants to pay by bank transfer can contact us and we'll help them to do that.

I did the sort of £1 test payment that you mentioned to their old collection account and if that fails to show up onm y bill I'll try the account you posted. For the record, this was their old collection account: Account Number: 71584685 Sort code: 40-05-30

I'd pay by cheque if I were you.