getting out of Scottish Power fixed tariff

milliemonster

we switched to Scottish Power last summer their Fixed Energy online tariff. My first quarterly bill was high and it turns out it is because they have put us economy 7 tariff (even though we don't have economy 7), this is because we have an economy 7 meter in our house from when the house used to have E7 heating years ago before we moved in.

Scottish power want to charge me £51 to change the meter and won't change the tariff unless we have the meter changed. The timing switch has been removed from the meter at some point in the past so we are now being charged the day rate for all the electric we are using (even overnight)

I phoned Consumer Direct, who have told me that all the other suppliers would change my meter for free and have advised me to ask SP if they would be prepared to do the same or we will move suppliers, trouble is we are on a fixed tariff until October and there is a penalty to pay if we switch beforehand.

I do not recall British Gas (who we were with before SP) charging us for E7 before we switched.

So, my questions are
Does anyone now what the penalty for switching from this tariff is? I seem to remember it being £20 or something

Would I have to pay this penalty bearing in mind I feel SP are being unfair in putting us on this tariff (when we are unable to ever take advantage of the lower night rate on the E7 meter anyway) when our previous supplier idn't and then proposing to charge us for meter replacement in order to switch to a different tariff?

Any ideas what I should do?

notbritishgas

Hi Millie, cannot help with getting out of the contract, but what I can say is that today I have had my meter changed from E7 to standard without charge. I am with npower, and despite their other faults seem to have come good on this one (unless the call centre was telling porkies).
Also last year my MiL who is with Atlantic had hers changed to standard, also free of charge.