Scottish Power ripping me off?

parnison

In December I had a cold call off representatives from Scottish Power on my doorstep with whom I changed over my gas supplier as I was already with the same company for my Electricity.

As a side note to this we are pre-payment customers for both Gas and Electric.

Beginning of January I received a letter about the Electric account debt recovery going upto £16.15 per week, this was before we paid for any of the electricity we where using, this was a jump of £13 from the debt recovery charge I have been paying for the last 5 years. I simply can't afford to pay £65 per month towards the debt.

This morning I received another letter saying that the debt recovery on the gas was being increased to £10 per week however the account had been clear of debt with British Gas for over 2 years so what debt am I paying as I have only been a customer with Scottish Power for a month, all gas use is pre-paid so how have I get myself into debt and it must be sizeble since they want me to pay £40 per month to clear it!!

Final straw so I called them, on the gas front they simply guessed at the usage and got it wrong, I don't owe them anything and there will be no recovery rate added to the meter.

With regards to the electric there is a debt from November 2004 when we where on monthly DD and I lost my job, the balance outstanding at the date they installed the pre-payment meter was £525.52

The gentelman on the phone thinks the recovery rate between 1st Dec 2004 and 31st Nov 2007 was £2.70 and then from Dec 2007 to current is £3.25 but the problem is he only thinks, no one seems to know for definate!!

By my working out

152 Weeks @ 2.70 = 410.40
104 Weeks @ 3.25 = 331.50
4 weeks @ 16.15 = 64.60

Grand Total = £806.50 paid off debt of £525.52 and yet they still say that I have an outstanding balance of £98.67

My question is how do I get them to provide me with all of the information that they are using to work this out as all they will tell me is that they have investigated it and they are right.

I have asked them to re-investigate again today and have also put a complaint in but without all of the relevant facts I dont have a leg to stand on. Is there anything I can do to resolve this or maybe even take it further?

KimYeovil

You've been paying only £3 odd per week to pay off a debt. And they're the ones who are ripping you off? Very funny.

Why do you not have the relevant facts?

parnison

If thats the standard of the response on here then maybe I am better off taking my question elsewhere.

At no point did I say that I was being ripped off by the rate of repayment, more by the fact that the debt has been paid, they are still taking money from me and then won't supply me with the information that I requested from them.

The question that I asked was whether there is any other way of me getting that information so that I can resolve the problem?

DirectDebacle

parnison wrote: »

The question that I asked was whether there is any other way of me getting that information so that I can resolve the problem?

You need to request the information you require in writing. Send it recorded delivery. If you have already done this and not received a response then make a Subject Access Request which they are bound to comply with. They may require a small charge (£10.00 I think) for this.