Getting ripped off for gas & electric after switch

vibe666

H, i'm hoping someone can help me.

i'm living abroad myself, but my mother is a pensioner in the UK in Cambridgeshire and a few months ago she had a call at the door by someone from Southern Electric telling her that they could save her money on her gas & electricity bills and that she should switch to them to save money.

this was in September this year i think. as she only has her pension to get by on and things are very tight for her she decided to go with them as they made a very convincing argument.

she switched from Scottish power who had her on a fixed monthly payment of £65 for her gas and she has a pre-pay card meter for her electricity which is around £10 per week.

when she switched, SP actually gave her a refund of £45 which was a few extra pennies for her.

when she got her first SE bill, it was £74 but she put it down to being the cost of an extra few days of an incomplete month at the time of the switch, however her next full bill came in at £85. she called to complain about the price hike and was told that she owed them over £450 and that they would be putting her bill up again in January to £120 per month. She said there was no way she could afford to pay that and explained that her bills had only ever been £65 all year and that she was only getting £119 per week for her pension which has to cover all her bills and food etc.

they said they'd "leave it for now and see how it went in the new year" but she is petrified that they are going to keep putting the price up and she has no idea what to do.

my sister was there when the first bill came in and tried to explain it to them, but they refused to speak to her when my mum passed the phone over saying they would only speak to the person who paid the bill, even though my mum was right there and had given her permission.

can anyone tell me what she can do? they won't speak to me at all on the phone and they just keep threatening to put the price up and scare my mother into submission whenever she calls.

she has very bad arthritis but she is so afraid of them sending bigger bills or cutting her off if she can't pay that she has turned the heating right down and whenever she is in the house she covers herself up with blankets and a hot water bottle and turns the heating off altogether during the night and just has lots of extra blankets on the bed.

i've sent her over some money and told her to just turn it on to keep herself warm and not worry about it and i'll send some more money whenever i can to help her out, but it's ridiculous that this company is allowed to effectively hold pensioners to ransom like this.

i did an online check and it seems like Scottish power were actually the cheapest supplier for her usage anyway so is it possible for her to just switch back and tell these shysters where to stick their outrageously overinflated bills and is there anything we can do to stop them from taking advantage of her like this?

is there some kind of watchdog in the UK tha i can contact to make a complaint, or can she contact someone who can sort this whole thing out and get herself back to paying her fixed £65 a month every month like she was before?

help! and thanks in advance.

KimYeovil

Does she have printed bills from when she was with Scottish Power?

Although there may be a fifteen to twenty percent difference in price there will not be the large differences you are mentioning. To be fair an £120 per month bill seems more probable than a £65 per month bill if she keeps her heating on. You, your sister, or she has to sit down with old bills and new bills and meter readings and work out where the anomaly is - what are the readings at changeover? are the end of Scottish Power the same as the start reads with Southern? There is no absolutely no reason for her to not have the heating on - maybe the debt had been built up and should have paid to Scottish Power? You do know the £65 payment was not 'fixed' irrespective of useage? (As far as I know Scottish Power do not have a Stay Warm tariff.)

(But I don't understand your comment that she can not afford to pay her bill - she has an income of £517 per month so can not see where the shortfall is. Pensioners are entitled to double the income of younger people for a reason. She should also be receiving £50 to £75 odd in CWPs the past month or two as well. As well as £250 winter payment.)

vibe666

her £65 per month was for her annual usage averaged out over the course of the year. she's been with scottish power for several years and has never had any problems with usage before. she obviously always had to use more gas during the winter months, but she is in a small recently renovated bungalow with good insulation, double glazing etc. and has never used a great deal of gas since she has been there so the £65 per month has always been plenty to cover her usage.

the problem she has with paying her bill if it keeps going up is that she is trying to live off her pension alone and it is barely enough to keep her going.

i'm assuming you do actually realise that she has more bills to pay than just her gas and having to shell out a quarter of her monthly income on her gas bill alone is just not sustainable when she was only just managing when it was £65 a month?

do you honestly think she'd be huddling in the cold under blankets in her own home if she could afford to keep the heat on in the house?

spiro

If she was previously paying £65 per month, every month she would have been on a direct debit tariff which obviously evens out the winter peaks and summer troughs in useage. This will probably account for her small refund.

Ther problem is she has swapped supplier just at the start of the winter and her new accounts wont have built up any credit over the summer.

Most suppliers want to account to balance out (£0) at a certain time of year so if that is in the spring (for example) she will have to pay much more until them to cover the winter peak. When they then review her DD it should drop.

You do need to bear in mind that we are on track for the coldest December in 100 years and November wasn't much better.

Remember she should be entitled to Winter Payment Allowance of between £250m and £400 (depending on age). In addition if she receives Pension Credit she may also be entitled to Cold Weather payments of £25 for every 7 days of very cold weather between 1/11 and 31/3. See http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/moneytaxandbenefits/benefitstaxcreditsandothersupport/inretirement/dg_10018668 If you go here http://pensions.direct.gov.uk/en/cold-weather-payment/home.asp and input her postcode it will tell how many payments are due. I tried mine and it says 3 so that would be £75.

I tried the postcode for Ely College in Cambridgeshire and that says 3 payments are due.

davidgmmafan

I strongly suspect there is something wrong with the readings either when the supply changed over, or some kind of over estimate on the bills now.

Regarding not being able to discuss the account with permission this is non-sense. Ask to speak to someone higher if they refuse, they can confirm with whomever is responsible for data protection.

Many businesses are happy to discuss it subject to the normal type of security questions being verified by the account holder. I understand if the permission is to last for longer than 24 hours they often request written authority (not sure what magic powers this has as they may not have a copy of the account holders signiture!), but that's the most hassle they can give.

So its defintely possible for someone else to discuss the account with permission. There is grounds for a sales agent complaint, ie the sales person lied, if the difference in cost is that great but as already observed there is not usually that much difference between providers. Is it possible that your mother was on some sort of reduced rate originally like a social tariff? This could be around 20% less than the standard prices, which could explain some of the difference.