2Emails from Scottish Power saying they are doubling my direct debit..

emmielou

I received an email from Scottish Power last week informing that my DD was being increeased from £39.00 to £96!!

I checked the meter and inputted the details and low and behold my account was actually in credit by about £40! So I emailed them and they emailed back saying that the DD was remaining the same and would be reviewed in the New Year.

Then today I received another email saying that they were putting it up to £88. Needless to say they are in receipt of a rather stroppy email!

I fail to see how they are calculating these payments even considering that it is winter and there has been price increases!

Has anyone else had this problem? I am concerned not so much with myself as I am going to fight this and will just stop paying by DD if it continues (or move if I can) but I am worried that the ridiculous increase has happened to others, I almost fainted when I first saw how much they wanted off me and vowed not to switch the heating on ever again!!! :snow_grin

debsy3

Yes it's just happened to me today too!!! Increased DD payment to £96.00 from £50.00. I'm going to take a leaf out of your book and contact them as I really can't afford it and at least if I'm paying some DD towards the bills it's better than nothing. Meters are read by me every quarter so no estimated bills either.

let me know how you get on????

Magentasue

As has been said many times on this board, at this time of year you should be in credit and by considerably more than £40 unless you're one of those people who never use heating or a tumble drier and don't have lights on any longer than in the summer.

The whole point of paying monthly is to avoid having to pay more in the winter - you pay an average monthly amount so early winter you're in credit and this offsets the increased winter bills so by spring the whole cycle builds up.

If you don't want to do this, you can pay by Standing Order every month and pay the balance quarterly.

tobykim

Yes I'm with SP and am currently over £200 in credit so this should see me through hopefully, I think you need to have a good credit balance for the Winter, I'll check how much if any credit I have if any when the heating gets turned off and claim it back

emmielou

I've only actually only been with Scottish Power since the end of july and checking my account today its actually £58 in credit so I am satisfied our electric and gas use is low (actually seems very low now!).

There is only 2 of us in the house and we both work all day and only have the heating on for a short time in the evenings. I guess we are used to the cold as when I go over friends it always seems boiling! Electric use is the same as the summer.

Scottish Power have confirmed (again) that the payments will remain the same and they will review in the new year which is fine by me, I don't want to build up a big debt but again I do not want to have my money in their account when it could be paying off my overdraft!!
:T

looktothefuture

Hmmm I'm going to check this again as well... they put me up from £28,00 per month to a whopping £78,00 and then again recently to £99.00! Ok so I run 3 fish tanks with lights, pump, filter 24/7 but there isn't any reason for it to be £99.00/m (even on a gas/electric key we were only spending between £40-50 a month!)

Lex_Marshall

I transferred gas and electric to Scottish Power this year at capped rates until 2011 and got in just before prices increased and that scheme was withdrawn. I did it through Uswitch and got the 12 bottles of wine. My starting meter readings went in on 25th July and my monthly DD was £33 - yes I do not use much and am often out of the UK.

I had an email about a fortnight ago stating that the DD would increase to £106 per month in December. They had used inflated usage estimates to arrive at this figure. I entered the correct readings into their web page and received a further email advising the monthly DD would be £65 from December. I was convinced this was incorrect so checked the Kw/hr consumption figures. I agreed with their electricity figure, but not with their figure for gas. Readers will probably realise that the gas meter figures have to be converted to Kw/hr using certain multipliers and a divider, but the ones you actually use for this differ depending upon whether you have an imperial or a metric meter. In fact the conversion process for an imperial meter has an extra multiplier of about 3 (2.84). The check that I made revealed that Scottish Power had been treating my meter as an imperial one whereas it is in fact metric, which meant they were aiming to charge me for three times more gas than I was actually using.

My email to them about this produced a response to the effect that Transco had told them an imperial meter had been installed at my house on 25th July and I was asked for the serial number of the current meter so that they could check it out. In fact my current meter had been installed on 30/11/2005 and I could not understand why anyone would be installing imperial meters in this day and age. Anyway Scottish Power now accept that I have a metric gas meter, the Kw/hr figure has been corrected and I am back onto a monthly DD of £33.

This is all well and good, but I can’t help but wonder if there are other customers out there not aware that they are subject to the same sort of error and thinking the sharp price increase is down to the hike in gas prices. Its worth checking.

tanith

I am with SP and our DD went up nearly a third in August... this month we are only £130 in credit which I don't think is going to see us safely through Winter without having a deficit by the late Spring... I think people are underestimating how much the cost has gone up... I just hope the price will come down in time to make a difference as I don't think we can manage another hike in DD... As it stands I would rather struggle to pay a bigger DD now than find I owe £100s more next year..

barginsrus

emmielou wrote: »

Has anyone else had this problem? I am concerned not so much with myself as I am going to fight this and will just stop paying by DD if it continues (or move if I can) but I am worried that the ridiculous increase has happened to others, I almost fainted when I first saw how much they wanted off me and vowed not to switch the heating on ever again!!! :snow_grin

Hi, this happened to me, I was paying £60 p/m and had a credit balance of over £150 and they wanted to up my DD to £91.50. When I contacted them saying I couldn't afford that much a month and to not change my DD they responded by saying they couldn't change it.

This did not make me very happy so I cancelled the DD (for fear I would go overdrawn) and used this site to find another supplier. The change is going through and Scottish Power then emailed be asking me to stay with them and if I did they would give me 12 bottles of wine! The CSA told me, when I rang to complain at how much that was costing all SP customers, she told me that if I registered with them again I could have my old DD of £60.

It beggars belief.

Ex_Gas_Guzzler

Lex_Marshall wrote: »

I transferred gas and electric to Scottish Power this year at capped rates until 2011 and got in just before prices increased and that scheme was withdrawn. I did it through Uswitch and got the 12 bottles of wine. My starting meter readings went in on 25th July and my monthly DD was £33 - yes I do not use much and am often out of the UK.

I had an email about a fortnight ago stating that the DD would increase to £106 per month in December. They had used inflated usage estimates to arrive at this figure. I entered the correct readings into their web page and received a further email advising the monthly DD would be £65 from December. I was convinced this was incorrect so checked the Kw/hr consumption figures. I agreed with their electricity figure, but not with their figure for gas. Readers will probably realise that the gas meter figures have to be converted to Kw/hr using certain multipliers and a divider, but the ones you actually use for this differ depending upon whether you have an imperial or a metric meter. In fact the conversion process for an imperial meter has an extra multiplier of about 3 (2.84). The check that I made revealed that Scottish Power had been treating my meter as an imperial one whereas it is in fact metric, which meant they were aiming to charge me for three times more gas than I was actually using.

My email to them about this produced a response to the effect that Transco had told them an imperial meter had been installed at my house on 25th July and I was asked for the serial number of the current meter so that they could check it out. In fact my current meter had been installed on 30/11/2005 and I could not understand why anyone would be installing imperial meters in this day and age. Anyway Scottish Power now accept that I have a metric gas meter, the Kw/hr figure has been corrected and I am back onto a monthly DD of £33.

This is all well and good, but I can’t help but wonder if there are other customers out there not aware that they are subject to the same sort of error and thinking the sharp price increase is down to the hike in gas prices. Its worth checking.

Very interesting, will check mine out, Thanks a lot!

apples5

changed to capped price dual fuel aug08 new meter elec sept 8th letter last week big rise in dd 97-127 gas no leccy yet hubby rung them twice arrogant and rude seethed left it a few days rung again nice lady said she would look into it hmmmmm now new bill reduced tariff we were in credit previously still cant understand bill email recieved 13 nov stated dualfual prev price reinstated still none the wiser resting over w/end to duel again monday lets fight back im sure the same people run sky phone centre or is it ntl??? how do elderly living alone cope on small pension god only knows!