Shocking service from British Gas. Do they even listen to their customers?

I've been living in a flat (apartment) for the last 6 odd years that has been wrongly metered.  The gas meters have been mixed up with the wrong addresses.  This was discovered late last year and should've been a fairly straightforward thing to sort out.  You'd think so, wouldn't you?  Well it hasn't been, not in the least.

After contacting British Gas at the end of last year and getting nowhere with them I decided to simply ignore the bills they sent me.  I figured that would get their attention and might actually make them sit up and do something useful about the situation.

For a couple of months it seemed they'd forgotten me completely but that changed just before I was about to head off to New York.  They sent one of those more nasty reminders and I just figured I'd try and get through to them again.  I spoke to three different people after making a few different phone calls.  I explained the situation and they just didn't get it.  I then asked them to put a note on my account and not take any further action as I was going to be away for the next ten days and they agreed that they would do this and that I would need to worry...

When I got back to my flat last night I found a letter dated the day after I spoke to them saying that they were beginning to take legal action against me.  They went on to say that if the bill was not paid within 10 days from the date of the letter they might report me to a credit reference agency (and numerous other threats).

Quite clearly they didn't take in anything I said to them in those phone calls as if they had they wouldn't have sent that letter out in the first place and, of course, wouldn't have sent it out with a 'within 10 days' warning.

I really didn't need this on top of my travel insurance claim and my bank's absurd overdrawn penalty payment demands!

Nothing to do with tech, I might add, but something I really wanted to vent.  If anyone has any advice or thinks they can help me further, please drop me a line.  I'll go into greater detail about the whole mess.