I have a credit balance with British Gas and requested a £1000 refund from an online chat representative on 25 October. I was assured, exact quote: "I have issued the refund for you amount £1000; you will receive the amount within 5-7 working days in your bank account :)" I didn't receive it. On 10 November, 12 working days after it was promised, I got another representative. This time I was assured, exact quote: "as its not received to you I've asked the advisor to kindly get back to you with its status to you as an urgent priority refund query....Sure, you'll receive the email from the advisor in next couple of hours" I didn't receive the email and contacted chat representatives again several hours later. This time, exact quote: "As the amount was high this was pending formrefund team for sometime. But i am happy to see that it has been authorized and soonyou will be credited with it'" I asked for a confirmation email, and received this on 10 October, exact quote: 'This is to confirm that the refund has been issued by the payment team for £1000 on your account which whould be refunded to your bank on or before 14/11/2023 as per the processing time." The refund didn't arrive (of course!) so I contacted BG again on 15 November to ask where it was. This is the response, exact quote: "Tthere is no refund issue from our side I'm really sorry for that." And why was there no refund? Exact quote: "i see your refund is showing cancelled because your bill has not been generated last 28days". Well -- the reason 28 days have elapsed since the last bill is that BG has failed to pay the refund from 25 October when the request was within the billing period, to 15 November when it wasn't-- all BG's fault!!! And what willl BG do about it? Exact quote: "To process the refund the direct debit collection date should not be more than 3 working days and your next direct debit date is on 16.11.23 that is the reason we are unable to process the refund". So after all that, I am right back where I started -- worse off, actually, because I have to wait 3 working days from 16 November to even BEGIN the refund ordeal again. During all this time I have not received even one message from BG telling me my refund is delayed or cancelled. I've been with BG for over 40 years but I notice that their rival Octopus has MUCH better customer reviews.