Scottish power, please help

Dreamnine

When you get this sorted out I advise you to switch- SP are an abysmal company with woeful CS.

spongebobfancypants

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Well, I imagine you would not disagree that you owe something. And if SP refused you in an email, hold on to the email.

Really, an email like this is a gift to someone in your position. But not if you play it the way you are going about it now. If you believe that you do owe something and you pay what you offered, despite their refusal, their refusal makes them appear unreasonable. But if you pay nothing, it is game over for you.

Only if they return payments should you consider not paying what you have offered.

agreed, i do owe money........ prehaps if i knew which company i needed to pay since there are 4 dealing with the same account and i knew which figure was the correct one i could also get somewhere!!!!

spongebobfancypants

Dreamnine wrote: »

When you get this sorted out I advise you to switch- SP are an abysmal company with woeful CS.

ALREADY DONE!!!! am with EDF, and am making regular d/d payments every month, as like i said, i am not a bad person, and do not enjoy being in debt!!:beer:

spongebobfancypants

have just double checked the emails sent, when they refused my offer i replied telling them i couldnt afford what they wanted as it was double what i offered. I then asked them to explain to me the next steps if i couldnt agree to there demands and i then got a reply saying that they would respond in 5 days..................................... am still waiting.

spongebobfancypants

scottishpower_company_representative wrote: »

Hi spongebobfancypants

I fully understand your position if you receive a final statement with an outstanding balance that you were not expecting. As I do not have any details to review your account, I cannot confirm exactly what happened but would like to point out a few issues. If you were always paying your account quarterly then you will be familiar with this process and that an invoice is issued to you and we then look for full payment within 14 days. This would be no different if the statement is a final account as we will still look for full payment within 14 days before reminder letters start being sent out.

If you were paying monthly by Direct Debit then we would have tried to obtain the full final balance by Direct Debit and you would have had to cancel your DD so that we did not take the payment. Again, it is when we issue the final statement that you should be discussing a payment arrangement for any outstanding balance. Under normal circumstances we will offer a payment arrangement over 3 months if you are unable to clear the balance in full. This is an acceptable length of time if no errors have been made on the account. For the balance to be outstanding by this amount on a monthly Direct Debit payment arrangement, we would likely have attempted to read your meter and been unsuccessful and then the estimated meter readings that have been used will be far lower than what is actually showing on your meter for that specific date. Customers do have a responsibility to check any meter readings that we use and to make sure they match with what is showing on the meter. If a customer cannot read their meter and does not have anyone to check the meter for them, we will be more than happy to send a meter reader round to check this for them.

You say that this all started around September so we are now 4 months down the line. What has stopped you making payments towards your account to help lower the balance? This is regardless of whether the payment plan was agreed by ScottishPower or not. If you offered to pay £20.00 per month, we would now be in a position where you had paid £80.00 off your balance and we would more than likely agree to hold debt action to clear the balance at this rate.

Remember that the electricity has been used and due for payment. Extending a payment arrangement can be done if errors are made or in exceptional circumstances.

Would you walk into your local supermarket, fill the trolley with £230.59 worth of groceries and then try to walk out saying your not paying just now and that you will pay what you owe at £X amount per month? I know this is a little harsh but this is almost what is happening.

This is one reason for trying to remove the quarterly tariff that allows customer to use gas and electricity for a period of 3 months and then be issued with a statement. If you are unsure how much gas and elec you are using, then you may be very surprised when you receive a bill for 3 months worth of consumption. This is why we introduced a monthly cash tariff to encourage customers to make more regular payments towards their consumption so that they are not hit with a large unexpected bill.

P.S. Sorry for the length of this, just wanted to clarify a few areas.

If there is anything you are unsure about or you disagree with anything I have said then please let me know.

Kind Regards

Colin @ ScottishPower

and yes your right........................ i wouldnt dare go into a shop, fill up the trolley and make a payment offer. However, prices are clearly marked, and dont have the issue in the supermarket of prices being continualy hiked up so that the suppliers make millions/billions each year out of us poor sods!

Scottish_Power

Hi

I know I was harsh in what I posted and this was only done to highlight the potential consequences of customer actions. Let me highlight another issue to you as the situation is slightly different to what I thought it was.

You now say that you have changed supplier and are now with EDF. Therefore, you deliberately agreed to transfer your supply without knowing how your current ScottishPower account was standing. By changing supplier, you know that your current account will be closed down to the transfer date and you will be issued with a final statement showing either a credit balance or a debit balance. My advise for you and anyone else looking to switch supplier, is to make sure that you know the current balance on your account with it being billed up to date on accurate meter readings.

Would you have changed supplier if you knew you were £230.59 in debt and that you would be asked to pay this balance in full if you did change?

By not knowing that your account was this much in debt, you have restricted yourself to any payment arrangement that can be offered to you. If you found out that you had an outstanding balance on your account, prior to changing supplier, then we would be able to discuss options available to you to help lower this balance for you at an acceptable rate. We may have offered a payment plan over 12-months to begin with which would certainly help with your monthly outgoings.

Yes, you might have seen a tariff with another supplier that could save you £10-£100 over the year but this is only really going to benefit your situation if you do not have to also pay off debt from your current supplier. If you still want to go ahead with the transfer, make sure that you factor in the additional payments that will be required to clear off your current balance.

Please do not think that I am being hard on you, there are lots of customers that are unsure how the industry works and I am merely trying to highlight potential pit falls when customers look to jump ship when they see a deal that seems really good for them.

You mentioned in your post that we were looking for double what you were able to pay, i.e. you were looking for the balance to be cleared off over 6-months rather than 3-months? I know that front line staff may be advised to offer only 3-months but I find it very difficult to accept that we would refuse point plank to a payment arrangement over 6-months. I can only review this if I have all the account details.

If we did not respond to your second email then this is an error on our part and of course you should have received information to confirm our position and the options available to you. Not doing anything and then allowing the debt to be passed to external collection agents will not help your situation and I would always recommend speaking to us. Email is fine if you have the time to wait, remember email are responded to within 5 working days. In this situation, if itwas me, I would want to speak to someone there and then and if I did not get a satisfactory answer from the first person I spoke to then I would want to escalate the matter. Have a look at the link below for our internal complaint procedure:

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

I would be very surprised if you had to escalate the matter to level 3 just for us to agree to the payment plan you were offering and could afford.

I know that times are very difficult for a lot of people just now which is why it is so important for customers to know how much gas and electricity they are using and to keep on top of it as best they can. Do not just accept a statement where you have been billed to an estimated meter reading and always check how close this reading is to what is showing on your meter at that time. Make sure that you are on the cheapest tariff with your current supplier for the payment method suitable to you. Set up an online account if you can and monitor your consumption. Get as much energy efficiency advise as you can to ensure that you are not wasting gas/elec for no good reason.

I would recommend you contact us through the contact details provided in the link above and see if we can agree on a suitable resolution for you.

Again, if you have any questions let me know.

Kind Regards

Colin @ ScottishPower

JasX

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