Prepayment meter fitted - not my debt!

marc.faulkner

Good Evening All,

I'd appreciate any advice that more knowledgeable people can offer me regarding the following...

I returned home from work today to find that my electricity meter has been changed to a prepayment meter. There was a note from "power 2 contact" put through my letterbox advising me of this fact - however the letter was addressed to the previous tenant at the address and includes the details of her debt to the supplier, Scottish Power.

I moved in to this property in May this year, and when I first arrived I contacted SP to advise the date I was moving in and also the meter readings. During my first call I was advised that this had all been sorted and a new account had been set up for me, however after 2 weeks I was still receiving debt collection letters and bills for the previous tenant so I called again and this time I was advised to send a copy of my tenancy agreement to them - which I have now done a total of 5 times (by email, fax and post).

Fast forward to now, I have still not received an electricity bill for the property in my name. There is no issue with me paying the bill for the power that I have used, I'm more than happy to do so once I have received a bill in my name - however I do object to paying for the previous tenants substantial debt (about £800).

I'm not at all happy that a prepayment meter has been fitted, nor that I am being pursued for the previous tenants debts.

Sorry for venting on here, I've tried to call both SP and P2C tonight however both offices are now closed, so I thought I'd seek some advise here before calling them in the morning!

Cheers,

Terrylw1

Oh dear. P2C are a debt collection company and they will have obtained a warrant with your Supplier to gain entry to your property to do this. If you were onsite when they called, they would have aborted the visit and reported back that they are trying to serve a warrant on a tenant who has left.

It doesn't sound like they have actioned a change of tenancy on their system for you.

You need to make a complaint about this. They will have to come back out and change your meter back again and make sure they do this quickly.

You are not liable for another customers debts in anyway. They close their account on the reading you supply to open yours (unless there was a gap in time in which case the old tenant's could be lower).

There is a SP rep on this board. Suggest contacting him about this and going from there.

They will be very happy to do this quickly since this is a bit of an egg on the face job for them.

I would slso suggest that you ask them what has happened to all your previous contact attempts since warrants are normally "signed off" by managers to avoid things like this where pre-authorisation checks get made to ensure they don't get adverse publicity from incorrect warrants.

I would tell them where you have been faxing this to and when so they know it should have been dealt with.

Don't bother with P2C, they won't help you. They are only doing what they are instructed. SP need to help you.

brightgirl

I hope you get this sorted. There is one problem with Scottish Power. You send them an email, you receice a notification of receipt then get the most basic reply. I`m bit weiry of calling them now as they trashed my door yesterday too and even though its showing payment on 15/09/2010 on my online account, there email reps can`t see it and neither do the door trashers.

I hope you record the conversation if you do call them and make sure you request compensation for your heartache. I know the feeling if you been messed about for nearly 6 months.

Good luck and if still no joy, Give the Energy Ombudsman a call and they will advise you on this. (its energy-ombudsman.org.uk/links/10-55-contact_details.php)

dogshome

Hi mark.faulkener - Along with brightgirls post, in just six weeks this site has had 3 reports of forced entry to change the meter to pre-pay, when the supplier had no grounds to do so - and they are just the one's who found their way to this site.

If you have not done so already, this needs a letter headed Complaint - this raises the problem to a level where SP are on a timeline to resolve it to your satisfaction - and in this you you should include a claim for all the cost and expense you have been put to

Scottish_Power

Hi mark.faulkener

I'm sorry to hear about your situation. This is not acceptable service from us and I do apologise for this. We should have updated the change of tenancy as soon as we received your tenancy agreement (this would have been required due to the size of debt on the previous tenants account). I can investigate this for you and see exactly what has happened and get these PP meters removed for you as soon as possible. If you want me to investigate then send me an email at [EMAIL="onlinecomplaints@scottishpower.com"]onlinecomplaints@scottishpower.com[/EMAIL]. Alternatively, have a look at our internal complaints procedure to see how you can contact us and how you can escalate the matter. For your information, I work within stage 3 of this procedure.

http://www.scottishpower.co.uk/support-centre/service-and-standards/complaints.aspx

Kind Regards

Colin @ ScottishPower

marc.faulkner

Many thanks for your reply Colin.

I have sent you an email to the address provided above. If you are able to reply to me today it would be very much appreciated, as all I want is to resolve this issue and be able to pay correctly for my own electricity usage.

Cheers,

marc.faulkner

Somewhat disappointed not to have received a reply to my email today Colin, as requested.

Hopefully you will have the time to read my email tomorrow and get back to me before the weekend - as I'm very keen to get my account all correctly set up so that I can pay for my own energy usage, and also get this prepayment meter removed (as it was fitted in error) so that I'm not paying towards the previous tenants debts.

brightgirl

marc.faulkner wrote: »

Somewhat disappointed not to have received a reply to my email today Colin, as requested.

Hopefully you will have the time to read my email tomorrow and get back to me before the weekend - as I'm very keen to get my account all correctly set up so that I can pay for my own energy usage, and also get this prepayment meter removed (as it was fitted in error) so that I'm not paying towards the previous tenants debts.

Best bet is to wait. Make sure you receive a complaint reference number and keep a note of it.

mattcanary

Yeah, but in the meantime OP is having to pay the old resident;s debt off through the meter. This needs to be sorted out pronto!

Terrylw1

Absolutely. I would have thought SP would be onto this very quickly.

Perhaps there is some missing info at the SP side (can't say without seeing their records) but they have gained entry on the back of a warrant that should never have been requested.

If SP did have all this information and the tenancy agreements, OP should be seeking compensation against them for all this hassle. I hope they didn't damage the property to much in gaining access!

Colin works at the stage 3 complaint level so should be used to dealing with difficult situations.

It will possible take a few days to get an engineer out there and currently the OP is having to top up a meter, probably in higher rates at their inconvenience.

OP perhaps should seek to go for a complaint to someone on high, for instance, their press office just to get that meter out.

Have all your evidence ready.

marc.faulkner

Disappointed, Colin, not to have heard anything from you yet at all in relation to this.

I would appreciate it if you could respond to my email as a matter of priority.

Regards,

Marc