Scottish Power: computer says no (a rant)

lolly5648

Scottish Power sent an email to say that as we are £15 in debit (first time ever - usually they owe us money) they were putting up our direct debit.

We rang to query this and also to change onto their Online Energy Reward. We were told we could do this but they would still put up our direct debit. We pointed out that it has been an exceptionally cold winter, we are now coming into the summer months and that we had installed double glazing in February so are using less energy and so should stay on our existing DD. CS said that as soon as you go into debit the computer automatically increases your debit and there is nothing you or they can do about it.

We asked if it could be reviewed after 3 months and were told that it is now only reviewed once a year, which seems odd as we have changed our DD amount downwards twice in the last 12 months.

Surely it is wrong for a company to increase your DD and then watch you go a couple of hundred pounds into credit and not allow you to get your money back? CS seemed to be totally in awe of what the computer says and common sense doesn't come into it.

We don't want to change supplier as we have been with SP a long time and have been happy with them but they have become very inflexible and unhelpful so we are now trawling the comparison sites. Shame.

Hazzanet

Try suggestibg to them that you pay the £15 there and then, and then they amend the DD manually to what it was previously.

lolly5648

Hazzanet wrote: »

Try suggestibg to them that you pay the £15 there and then, and then they amend the DD manually to what it was previously.

A sensible suggestion but CS seemed to be reading from a script and are not allowed to deviate from it. If the computer does not allow this then they are not able to do it, commonsense does not come into it.

dogshome

Hi lolly5648 - I'm afraid the only way to challange the D/D increase is to do your own homework on the bills over the previous year.
It's unlikely that they will cover exactly 365 days, so add up the number of days the last 4 bills cover and work out the daily consumption on the last bill, then use this figure to plus or minus the the bills total to get the 365 day consumption.

And by the way it's not unknown for SP to 'short' the number of days a bill covers so it just misses out the next D/D
Good Luck

Cardew

lolly5648 wrote: »

Surely it is wrong for a company to increase your DD and then watch you go a couple of hundred pounds into credit and not allow you to get your money back?

No, it is not wrong.


The principle is that the DD should be set at a level where the estimated annual expenditure is covered by 12 equal payments. This will mean that you go into credit over the summer months and 'use up' that credit over the winter.

If you feel that it is wrong for them to have 'your money' in a credit balance, then revert to quarterly payment(and lose the DD discount)

DVardysShadow

Ask Scottish Power to provide full workings for the calculation and see whether you agree.