Paying Electricity Arrears

Anniek1969

Was wondering if anyone had any experience with Scottish Power regarding arrears repayments. I has about £1100 arrears with them which had run up over about 7 years, in september last year we agreed to pay them £110 per month for 2 years and that should pay off what we currently use and all of our arrears. In march they contacted us and told us that the payment was to increase to £195.50 and they told us that they couldn't extend arrears repayment by any more than 12 months. Been keeping an eye on my useage and since april i've repayed them £782 and only used around £150 in electricity which means that i've paid them over £600 towards the arrears. We are really struggling to make these repayments and my DH is on holiday for 3 weeks which means that he has no overtime in the next 3 weeks which amounts to nearly £150 so next month is going to be a real struggle.

Just wondered if anyone knows if there are any general guidelines as to repaying arrears and can the force us to keep up these payments until we've paid it all off. I am going to phone them and try and negotiate but just wanted to know if I had any chance of getting them to reduce it.

Thanks in advance.

bulchy

Hi Annie, if the arrears are because you have had estimated bills, I know npower's policy is if you havent had the a meter read bill for more than 2 years, they are willing to spread the amount owed over the amount of days that the bills were estimated for. I spoke to a manager of npower once after trying to negotiate with an employee at the call centre and he worked it out for me over the phone, he said we hadnt had a meter read bill for x amount of days (cant remember exactly as this dispute with them is still going on i know it was more than 2 years , meters were being read but reading's couldnt be passed on because serial numbers on meters were wrong) and divided the debt over this many days.
I hope I've explained this properly, if I havent I'm sure someone else will come along soon and put me right. Might be worth you asking to speak to a supervisor to see if you can negotiate something with them.
Sue

IvanOpinion

AnnieK
Contact the call centre again and tell them that the payments are too high and you are struggling. Ask them (nicely) to reduce them. It is possible that the increase is due an automated process that simply recalculates and spreads arrears over one year. I think you have shown plenty of good faith and attempt to pay to be alowed a bit of leeway.

One possibility might be to ask them to do another (manual) reassessment .. I think this might spread the remaining arrears over a full year (so if you are half way through the year then it should reduce the amount of arrears you are paying off each month).

Ivan

Anniek1969

Went online and put in my meter reading and it says my balance is £600.60 which means that we've paid £500 to the arrears in the last 4 months so hopefully they will review it and allow me to reduce the amount, even if they reduce it by £40 or so it will make a difference to us. I'll give them a phone on monday morning and see what they say.

bulchy

Good luck tomorrow Annie, let us know how you get on
Sue

Anniek1969

Phoned them yesterday but as the bill is in my DH's name they won't deal with me. The bill is addressed to mr & mrs but then it says Dear MrK, so will have to wait till DH finishes up for his holidays on thursday. Will let you know how I get on.

bulchy

Thats stupid isnt it? You contribute to the bill, have your name on the bill, but cant ask for help Seems to me that they're just being awkward. Hope you get sorted on thursday, good luck
Sue

robnye

bulchy wrote:

Thats stupid isnt it? You contribute to the bill, have your name on the bill, but cant ask for help Seems to me that they're just being awkward. Hope you get sorted on thursday, good luck
Sue

this is something that my wife hates, so when ever possible we get the bill in both names, if not, i have to talk to the company concerned and give approval for them to talk to my wife.

every now and then we have to repeat the process, cos some prat has removed the approval.........

it does seem stupid, one excuse was 'that i was the wage earner' DW nearly blew a gasket......... whether i am or not the wage earner, that implied that my wife didnt work at all.... in fact she does 3 jobs.

some companies have there policies so far up their nether regions........

Anniek1969

I hate this attitude too, we have this problem with a few companies even though he repeatedly tells them that they have permission to deal with me. This one is really stupid though as the house was my parents and the bill was originally in my dads name until he died then I put it in my name. When I got married I contacted them with change of name details and they just automatically put it in his name, although the bills are adressed to Mr & Mrs. He works 12hr shifts and i'm a SAHM so I deal with all the finances and always have, he wouldn't know where to start if I left it up to him. What's really stupid is that I could give my BIL all the details and he could pretend to be my DH and they wouldn't know the difference but they won't speak to me, how do they know that they're really speaking to the bill payer.

IvanOpinion

Anniek1969 wrote:

I hate this attitude too, we have this problem with a few companies even though he repeatedly tells them that they have permission to deal with me. This one is really stupid though as the house was my parents and the bill was originally in my dads name until he died then I put it in my name. When I got married I contacted them with change of name details and they just automatically put it in his name, although the bills are adressed to Mr & Mrs. He works 12hr shifts and i'm a SAHM so I deal with all the finances and always have, he wouldn't know where to start if I left it up to him. What's really stupid is that I could give my BIL all the details and he could pretend to be my DH and they wouldn't know the difference but they won't speak to me, how do they know that they're really speaking to the bill payer.

Thye don't but will have recorded someone claiming to be so (and possibly answering some security questions). Given that it is in joint names this surprises me but maybe there have been data protection issues and someone has brought in a new procedure (the data protection act is fine until it gets in the way of you getting information )

Ivan

emmaBZ

just a suggestion ...can you switch to a token meter ? we owed some money to npower when we moved in to our new address so we had a token meter put in you just put in tokens to get elec but they charge it at a slightly higher rate untill your debt is cleared it worked wonders for us as they never told us when we paid back debt just kept getting aprox £100 refund every 6 months or so usually in time for xmas !!