British gas - A new boiler is not more efficient?

By Value hunter on Feb 8, 2011 | In In the home, Bad business, Frugal wars

British Gas do not care about their customers!

According to British gas, replacing your old back boiler (30 years old in our case) is, and I quote...

"Replacing an old boiler with a new boiler, will NOT save you any money on your gas bills!"

So exactly why are we all being told that we need to be more energy efficient and to upgrade our boilers?
A 30 year old Baxi boiler, of the old back boiler (behind the fire) standard, is what we had.
It didn't even have a working thermostat, it was either "on" or "off"

I asked for a clear confirmation this morning with one of British gas' billing "experts" - will a brand new boiler save me money when heating my home? - the answer was a firm "No!"

Perhaps British gas would like to speak to OFGEM?
British gas should visit the Department for Energy and Climate?

"Improving energy efficiency is a sensible thing to do. It saves money, makes the home more comfortable, and reduces carbon emissions" (DECC website Feb 2011)
According to the facts, our new boiler is running at 91% efficiency - our old boiler didn't even get above 50% efficiency, yet they both use the same amount of gas according to British gas?

British gas cannot explain that for the month mid November 2010 to mid December 2010, we paid FOUR TIMES our normal monthly gas credit. It was however a very cold month, so why did we pay FOUR TIMES our normal gas credit from mid December 2010 (With a brand new boiler) to mid January 2011?
From mid January 2011 to mid February 2011, it has been (so far) very mild, temperatures have not fallen below zero in our area and regularly we have had temperatures 15 degrees higher than in Dec - Jan, yet our credit remains on track to be FOUR TIMES higher than normal. British gas have not got the option now of blaming "an exceptionally cold period!"

In the past three months, British gas' excuses have been:

"You must have a leak"
"Your meter must be faulty"
"You can't have loft insulation!"
"It's because of the VAT increase"
"It's due to the price increase for gas" (This was three days BEFORE the price of gas went up!)
"You can't have had your thermostat set properly" (This was on a back boiler that didn't have one!)
"It's the exceptionally cold weather"
and my personal favourite... "I don't know!"

If the company charging us FOUR TIMES our normal gas monthly bill doesn't know, how the hell are we, as customers, supposed to know and do anything about it?