Oh look, Scottish Power and LCS again...

honey_bee19

Hi everyone,

I love this site but never posted here - I hope someone here could help us with a complicated issue we're having! This is a long story so maybe put the kettle on now....;)

Myself and my partner lived in a rented flat for a year from July 2007 to August 2008. When we moved in we were told by the estate agent that our electricity was supplied by Southern Electric and they would contact them to set up the account. This never happened and eventually we set up the account with SE ourselves.

Whilst we were living there we got a letter which was addressed to a man who lived in the street next to ours - it was his name, the first line of his address and his postcode - but randomly the name of the court we lived in was within the address as well. The letter was for non-payment of a bill to Scottish Power. We simply thought it was delivered to the wrong address..... A few months later we then got a letter from a debt collection agency regarding the account. Interestingly, this letter was addressed exactly the same way BUT was hand-delivered and had the other man's name scrubbed out and 'To the Occupier' put there instead, and all other address details scrubbed out except the line with our court name on there. I phoned them and explained that I really didn't think this was ours. I then passed on our meter number to the woman to prove that I didn't think it was our address and we heard nothing else.

In January of this year we had a letter sent to our new address, this time from LCS (a different debt company than before) saying that they thought we owed over £1000 to Scottish Power. We asked for a bill to prove this, given that we had never seen one.

The first bill we got sent was for £380ish - but the entire amount other than the standing charge was carried over from a previous bill. We asked to see this previous bill...and got sent the same thing again. We then contacted Scottish Power directly and asked to see the full bill relating to the account and....they sent exactly the same thing again!

LCS then told us they would be seeking legal action as we had not paid 'despite entering into an agreement' which we never did - I said that if a bill arrived with the correct readings and details then we would pay but as we had not received this then we wouldn't pay a thing.

Eventually we got a copy of the 'previous' bill from both LCS and Scottish Power. The name and address was for the chap in the street next to our old house! We pointed this out and said we would not be paying it as it is not our bill. They then sent a bill with our name and address on.

What we have now is 3 copies of a bill covering the same period BUT:
- the bills have 2 different names and addresses on (ours and the other guys)
- there are 2 different meter numbers showing on each bill (we never had the meter changed so why are there 2 numbers?)
- the meter readings vary from bill to bill - even the ones with an 'A' beside them!
- these meter readings don't tally with the readings we had taken when we moved in and out of the property - these were recorded by an external property inventory company. We have even provided these readings to Scottish Power but they don't seem to have taken any notice.

LCS have now sent us through 2 cards saying they are going to visit. Each time we have called and told them not to bother as we are yet to receive a bill which correlates to our energy consumption and our readings.

Here are our tricky problems:
- we don't have a copy of the meter number and our old landlady has been less than helpful in getting it for us off the new tenants
- Southern Electric never charged us any money despite us setting up the account with them.

It may well be that Scottish Power were supplying our electricity but until they produce a bill which is definately ours (and not the guy in the next street!) then we don't want to pay anything. it would be awful if we paid this off and then the real bill landed on our doorstep further down the line! We just seem to be going round in circles now though and LCS are not very helpful - they just want the money and don't seem to listen to a word we say - the letters from them say we owe anything between £380 and £1500 - it's always interesting seeing what amount the next letter will say!!

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated - I know this is an odd problem but we are tearing our hair out with it! Every time we think progress has been made we just end up right back where we started.

Phew....I said it was a long one.....

thank you for reading this far!

Scottish_Power

Hi honey_bee19

Thanks for posting your situation. I am confident that we can get this matter resolved quickly for you. I will detail below what action needs to be taken.

1. We can check who supplied your previous property while you were occupying this address and also the meter serial number for this property.
2. If you appied to Southern Electric and they did not take over the supply then you will have to investigate this with them.
3. If ScottishPower supplied the property during your occupancy then we will be able to amend our accounts to ensure that we only charge you for the electricity used. The fact that you have the start and end meter readings helps greatly with this.
4. Once we have been able to create an accurate bill for you then we can discuss setting up a payment arrangement for the outstanding balance.

If you send me a PM with the address of the property then I will investigate this for you and confirm all details that we hold.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind Regards

Colin @ ScottishPower