After a year of dealing with ongoing issues with British Gas, I decided to switch my dad to Octopus. My dad has been charged £185 a month by British Gas, despite not using any heating, working six days a week (so he's out of the house most of the time), and turning off all appliances at the wall when he's not using them. His fixed-rate deals with British Gas are also much more expensive than other options. I suspect they kept him on a higher tariff because he's vulnerable and didn't know how to switch providers or complain. He lives in a two-bedroom house, the same size as mine, yet I’m paying £50 a month electricity with british gas (working from home full-time) while my dad is paying £180. I really don't understand the reasoning behind this pricing. Same size house, my dad uses far less electricity than I do, but he's being charged more than three times as much. This did not sit right with me so i compared our bills, he seems to be on a higher rate than me, using less than half electricity than what i do and they seem to be giving him different costing of tariff options to myself. I thought there was regulations ensuring that everyone is paying the same rate? Today, I got a quote from Octopus for £45 a month. That's a saving of £1680 per year just by switching! How can british gas charge £180 whilst Octopus has taken his meter readings and will only charge him £45. No wonder they are racking in the profits! We gave British Gas so many chances: we tried to find a reasonable fixed-rate deal, contacted their customer service (which was awful), arranged engineer visits that never happened, changed to smart readers (which failed to work) and requested a refund since he's hundreds of pounds in credit. The refund was supposed to take up to a week, but it's now been eight weeks, and still nothing. Looks like customer service never processed the request—yet another lie. I do have email evidence of this lie as well. Their customer service live chat agents, ends the chat whenever they want, leaving you begging for answers. Their engineers do not turn up, and then re-booking these engineers is painful. British gas offer compensation for the lost time when the engineers do not show up, they state it will automatically be added to your account - however it never does get added. To make their lives easier the customer services say what you want to hear to get you off the phone/live chat with them and then do not proceed to action their words. I had to start screenshotting live chats and keeping evidence (which we should not need to do!). They even respond to reviews telling people to reach out via social media, but then they don't escalate any problems and just brush people off. I previously reached out to their social medias, and once again we led with more promises which was never kept. From start to finish the whole customer journey has been a shambles, they need to be investigated! It’s clear they’re ripping off vulnerable customers. Thankfully, I’ve been able to sort this out for my dad and now he is very happy not having to worry about his bills. However, it is very sad to think how many other people are being taken advantage of like this.