Scottish Power

Furniture_man

??? ??? ??? ??? ???

At long last!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After being with SP for 6 months and numerous attempts to conduct my account online, I emailed them with a request to pull their bloody finger out or I will pull the plug. I have just had an email telling me they will respond to my request within 5 days.

DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH!!!!!!!!!!!!

System

??? ??? ??? ??? ???

At long last!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After being with SP for 6 months and numerous attempts to conduct my account online, I emailed them with a request to pull their bloody finger out or I will pull the plug. I have just had an email telling me they will respond to my request within 5 days.

DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dont hold your breath, i got one of them, they are dished out on auto response. Today is day 4 or 5 and i havent heard a peep. ::)

puffin_scot

I'm a Scottish Power customer for Gas & Electicity (getting to that stage was a story in itself) and I find their online service poor. I find that gaining access to my online account is sporadic at the best of times. You can wait days for a response - I regularly get "The page you are looking for may have moved or no longer exists" messages when accessing my online account details.

I was set to leave for Powergen this weekend but I now see they are putting their prices up.

I'm sure others have mentioned this but what gets me is that most other companies I deal with (e.g. my magazine subscriptions; BT; banks etc) all write when they are changing their prices but I never seem to hear from Scottish Power.

It's about time the regulators standardised the various requirements for a standing charge/no standing charge & unit prices so that comparisons are easier. I'm an accountant so generally good with this sort of stuff but even I have to have a spreadsheet or two going just to work out which company to go with. Uswitch etc are good but I like to get behind the numbers to work out what drives my bill - e.g. our use of electicity is much greater than that of gas and therefore we're more interested in an electricity price rise than a gas one because it's going to cost us more in actual £££ - but if only it was a simple as finding a cheap electricity provider!!! of course what you find is that if you get one cheap the other is more expensive - they seem to discount one fuel against the other to tempt you in. It's quite a minefield!

I see reading a few threads that I'm not alone in my desire to shift but there doesn't seem to be much in it money wise on the figures I'm using for our flat. Maybe better the devil I know - which is probably what they rely on to keep their customers.

System

The plot thickens:

I share the same first name and initial as the woman in the next street. The only thing different about out addresses is that i have 'Lane' on the end of the first line of my address. Our postcode is similar.

As our names and addresses are sometimes mixed up with the post office, i very often get her mail. Last year at 3am i got a fire crew, i very often get her hire cars, salesmen, tradesmen and the like. It is so frequent now that i have her phone number and phone her if shes got any mail.

I rang her last week as i had mail for her and she came round yesterday to collect it. 'You havent gone over to Scottish Power?' she asked 'cause i am having a hell of a bother with them'.

Apparently they got the addresses mixed up and tried to take over her utilities. First thing she knew was when she had a letter from her utilities saying she was leaving. Then she noticed a Direct Debit had been set up at her bank by Scottish Power. She stopped it before they took any money out.

She had a hell of a game trying to sort things out her end, but when she did, she found our meter readings are one digit different. If i wasnt in such a pickle with changing utilities this would be funny. ???

mrtickle

How on Earth did they manage to set up a DD on her bank account? Surely they'd need to know her account no. and sort code?!

System

How on Earth did they manage to set up a DD on her bank account? Surely they'd need to know her account no. and sort code?!

I know, thats the frightening bit, you see, i gave them my direct debit details, but obviously they bypassed them and set up hers, without her consent!!!

mrtickle

Yes but how could they have found out her account no and sort code? Rifled through her dustbin? That sort of info isn't exactly published in the telephone directory... sounds like the sort of case the authorities should investigate.

tru

Powergen rang me yesterday, to confirm that I was leaving them. I said actually I've changed my mind, I'll stay with you. Told them how rubbish (and more expensive) SP were, they said 'hang on, I'll do an online price check with U-Switch just in case' so he did and SP came out the cheapest for me. It did when I checked too, so something's wrong somewhere or SP lie.
Powergen said as I'm technically a new customer again, I'll get 2 free energy-saving lightbulbs ;D

System

Troo i dont beleive a word any energy supplier says, they can turn things round and make them sound the best, when in fact they are not.

The only thing i trust these days are the websites which work out which are the cheapest suppliers. Then i check two or three if i can to check they are not biased.

System

Yes troo,

I've had the same experience with on-line sites which claim to be able to compute this. I think it may be that sometimes their tariff information is out of date, but I suspect that in some cases suppliers are intentionally giving them lower rates so that people who do not check just sign-up to them on the basis of the computed costs shown.

For this reason for some time, after getting the results from such sites, I have applied to the actual companies which seemed to be the cheapest to get their exact tariffs so that I could then work out the real cost first before signing-up. I found quite a few discrepancies.

However, with Scottish Power even that does not work because they intially quote you erroneous tariffs just to get you to sign-up and then change them to their latest real one after you have signed-up. That is my experience of them so beware.

I think we all have to face that there is an increase in dirty commercial tricks now in the power industry. It is the tip of the iceberg that Powergen have just been fined £70, 000 (I think) for this sort of thing, in their case preventing consumers being transferred.