Scottish Power Doorstep Misrepresentation

Bluehorizon_2

Scottish Power salesmen went door to door in Poole, Dorset yesterday. They wore grey outfits with yellow trim that made them look like engineers. They also had yellow radiator keys hanging round their necks.

The one that came to our door tried to lead me to believe that he was my provider and wanted to check my bill to make sure I was getting the best tariff.

I told him that we were not with Scottish Power, but he insisted that 'due to deregulation' it was a legitimate request.

He denied that his purpose was to persuade me to switch my suppy to Scottish Power.

There are many vulnerable and elderly people who will be taken in by this approach and I will be contacting our local trading standards office to complain.

macman

Call me a pedant, but they were meter box keys, not radiator keys. Probably opening external boxes to get the meter numbers.

grahamc2003

While it's no excuse at all, they weren't SP employees - they were from some marketing company/direct sales or somesuch.

Having said that, no suppliers should comission any companies to do such dirty work for them. It really gives suppliers a bad name - desrvedly so when they sponsor this sort of thing.

I've had similar, or worse, tricks played on me. I was stopped for an energy survey in the street once. A pushy girl asked me a few questions and noted some of them down. She then asked me to sign the survey, so I asked to read it, and it was a contract to sign up with a different supplier. She really changed her perky tune when I actaully read back to her the title 'contract for supply or somesuch' and even then claimed it wasn't any form of contract. I've worked a long time in the energy industry, and I was really sad to see these blatantly immoral sales trechniques. I reported this to Seeboard's (who I was working for at the time) higher management, but they weren't interested.

There were also rumours that salesmen from different areas met up in a layby somewhere to simply exchange customer names and addresses, and simply fill in transfer forms themselves, getting about £60 comission for each one. No idea if that were true, but at the time, there were many people complaining of being signed up to switch to other suppliers without their knowledge.

I'm pretty well ashamed of being associated with an industry which enables such things - even if the abuse isn't that bad anymore, there are still nasty practices going on, especially for the vulnerable. Why the regulator, or whoever else has the authority, hasn't stamped out these practices is beyond me

Bluehorizon_2

macman wrote: »

Call me a pedant, but they were meter box keys, not radiator keys. Probably opening external boxes to get the meter numbers.

You're right of course, my error. Too bad he wasn't going to do anything useful such as bleed my radiators :rotfl:

Seriously though, their approach is to check my bill and my meter, although I don't deal with them at all?

I'm concerned that people are being pressured into changing their providers by these doorstep cowboys. Someone should put a stop to this.

davidgmmafan

"Seriously though, their approach is to check my bill and my meter, although I don't deal with them at all?"

Its all a con, you'll see posts with people saying but he took my meter reading or looked at my bills and yet I've now got this massive debt. The only info they are interested in is what you are paying, then when they do their calculation hey presto their figure is lower. You sign up they pocket the commission, then probably !!!!!! off somewhere else before getting caught, then 6-12 months down the line you fine you have a massive debt.

I agree someone should stop it, the companies themselves clearly aren't bothered. I find this bizarre. I mean I know they'll have sales managers who won't care about complaints but the cost of dealing with the small percentage of people who DO complain must be significant. I don't just mean the time effort and goodwill gestures. What about the fact they'll never come back to you and tell many more people not to touch the company with a bargepole.