When a Bord Gáis pay plan goes awry:A reader from Dublin contacted us after she had fallen behind in her gas payments.

Following a final demand letter she got in touch with Bord Gáis and made an arrangement to pay it off. “We agreed a plan and I paid the first amount on the Friday like I said I would. They gave me a couple of dates to pay the remaining amounts. At one stage, when I’d more in my bank than I thought I would have, I decided to payabout two weeks early. It meant that I wouldn’t have to worry about it and I would have an extra couple of weeks to get the next payment together,” she writes.

“However, to cut a long domestic budgeting story short, I made a mistake or got confused and paid less than I had agreed.”

Days later she received another final demand and when she contacted Bord Gáis she was told she hadn’t followed the agreement. “I apologised and said that I couldn’t remember what I’d agreed with them exactly but I would rectify it straight away.”

She says Bord Gáis ticked her off for breaking the deal on two levels. Firstly “by not paying the full amount, which is totally my fault. But secondly, apparently I also broke the agreement by paying early. This is what I find absolute madness and the reason for my long-winded e-mail.”

She says she double checked with the company and they confirmed that people who pay off arrears early are in breach of their contracts. Generally speaking the company allows customers in arrears two “deals” under which they can clear off their arrears before it insists that customers clear the amount in full or face disconnection.

We contacted the company and it appears our reader was not given the correct information. A spokesman clarified the issue and stressed that a customer paying off arrears early would not be considered in breach of their contract with the company. He said that once our reader had failed to pay the right amount on the first occasion, she was in breach and it did not matter that she had paid off a sum earlier than she said she would. Once the agreement is breached on the first occasion, an entirely new deal needs to be reached but he also said that it was not in the interests of the company to disconnect people until all other avenues had been explored.

The Sky saga goes on

Recently we carried an item about a survey which showed Sky television customers here pay up to 20 per cent more than customers in the UK and get an inferior service. Sky pointed out that the BBC and ITV are free-to-air in the UK but not here. Our readers weren’t buying this however and several got in touch to point out that the channels were free-to-air. Not true says another reader by the name of Alan Fairbrother. “Many years ago, I remember a company called RTÉ Relays and Merlin TV (and others) merged and became Cablelink. They provided a good TV reception through cables rather than the hit and miss of the old style aerial. But the BBC brought a case against them as they were using the BBC signal and supplying their programmes to Irish homes,” he writes.

He says Cablelink were then made to pay a fee for using the signal and he supposes this has continued on to UPC and SKY. “So this is why Sky say that in the UK, ITV and BBC are free-to-air just like RTÉ, TG4 and TV3 are here. But they have to pay the UK stations for retransmitting their signal to another country.” He then suggests that what readers should do “ask Sky to cancel their access to ITV and BBC and buy a cheap satellite receiver.”

Printer refuses ink

Running low in black printer ink recently, David Grant from Waterford dropped in to his local Tesco found the item “and then blinked several times at the marked price”. He says the price of the ink was €41.95. “A couple of weeks back this same item was priced at €14.99,” he claims. He called a staff member and asked him to explain, pointing out the huge disparity over a short period. “He made non-commital noises, and indicated it would be ‘looked into’. This was three weeks back. The same item remains today at this inflated price. There is no price change of this item (Epson Ink Cartridge T0611) in other locations”.