Scottish Power upped DD with no notice.

Scottishmummy

Scottish power have taken £31 more than usual from my account with NO NOTICE and as I had only put in enough to cover all my DD's my MORTGAGE payment has bounced!!!!!!!!!! :mad::mad::mad: I am spitting mad especially as they were quick enough to tell me my deal was coming to an end by email so why have I not received notice about this? The really galling thing is that this payment has put me £50 in CREDIT at the end of the deal!!!!!!!!!!! I will definately be going elsewhere now.

Mrs_Ryan

They did the same thing to us - upped it by £14 without telling us. We've cancelled the DD and are paying by internet bill payment instead.

Olive_Oyl

Hello Scottishmummy

If your DD has changed without notice , you can claim it back through your bank .


https://www.subscription.co.uk/secureonline/quicksubs_dd_guarantee.asp?pub_name=The%20Stage

Scottishmummy

Olive_Oyl wrote: »

Hello Scottishmummy

If your DD has changed without notice , you can claim it back through your bank .


https://www.subscription.co.uk/secureonline/quicksubs_dd_guarantee.asp?pub_name=The%20Stage

I thought that so I have just been on the phone to my bank and they will refund in 48hrs. It is too late for the mortgage payment though and as well as a £15 unpaid item charge I may get a £20 unauthorised overdraft fee but they can't tell me that for sure until 1st April. I will have to phone my mortgage company in the morning to see if they will charge me also - I expect so - and then I will be in touch with Scottish Power demanding they refund all charges!!! If SP won't refund the unpaid item charge my bank will relook at it.

Scottish_Power

Hi Scottishmummy

I am sorry to hear about this. When your Direct Debit payments are reviewed and are increased, we will automatically produce a letter confirming the detail of the change. If you are an online customer then this information would have been emailed to you.

I can investigate this for you if you wish. Just send me an email to [EMAIL="onlinecomplaints@scottishpower.com"]onlinecomplaints@scottishpower.com[/EMAIL] and I will see what happened with your reassessment letter.

Kind Regards

Colin @ ScottishPower

Scottishmummy

I am currently waiting for a callback from Scottish Power. Colin I have looked back through all my emails from Scottish Power since November and all I have received are 'it is time for your meter reading ones' and the one telling me my deal was coming to an end. If I have no joy over the telephone I will be in touch.

Scottishmummy

Apparently because it was my annual review a paper copy was sent out in Feb as well as an email - well according to my online account NO letters have been sent but the email list has an email marked as having been sent which I haven't received yet an email which I have received is not on the online list so their list is obviously wrong!!!! Even then the online copy of the email I alledgedly received only has a link to my account, absolutely no mention of there being a payment increase or that my account has been reassessed!!!!:mad:

Well my bank are recalling the payment and have stopped the DD so SP are going to have to ask for their next payment.

I asked for the unit price of the tariff they want to put me on next and for both Gas and Electricity they are cheaper for the first set of units but British Gas are cheaper for the second set of units which I think we tend to use more of per mnth and we get nectar points with BG so it looks like we will be going back to them!!!!

DirectDebacle

Scottishmummy,

Read my posts from #117 onwards here: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2976258

If your DD has been cancelled then S.P. will almost certainly put you on their standard plan and charge your energy at their standard rate. If your tariff is subject to particular discounts then you will likely lose these and incur early cancellation fees if applicable.

If what you say is correct then I would argue that the cancellation of the DD is because of their breach of the DD agreement and that you should suffer no loss or increase in costs as a result of their abuse of the DD arrangement, should this occur.

Premier_2

Under the terms of the DD guarantee, your bank (the paying bank) is required to repay any disputed transaction immediately, not after 48 hours.

You can also claim consequential damages (i.e. bank charges resulting from the transaction that failed to abide by the terms of the DD scheme) via your paying bank, but these may not be paid until the bank receive the same from the Originator which should be within 14 days.
(although if the bank delay unduly in returning the funds of the original transaction, it may be the bank are liable for the consequential losses)

Under the terms of the scheme, you are entitled to 10 working days notice of any variation in a regular DD payment (unless agreed otherwise).

Cancelling the DDI is not a wise move as you will probably be taken off the tariff you are currently on, or at least will lose the discount for paying by DD. You do not need to, (nor indeed should unless you also dispute DDI itself) cancel the DDI to claim under the terms of the DD guarantee.

Scottishmummy

Premier that was the last DD of that deal anyway so as soon as the money is available again I'll go online and pay what the DD should have been straight into my SP account which will still put us in credit until I give them the final meter reading - they had one only 3 weeks ago so shouldn't have used too much more since then. The deal we were on ends on the 31st March anyway and I had no intention of carrying on with them. SP's so called deal would still have had us paying more than 3p per Tier 2 unit of electricity more than BG's STANDARD rate!!!!!! And you have to use more Tier 1 units before you are switched to T2.

Don't know if it's because it's a building Society but they place the recall and the money is in the account in 48hrs. They did say to ring back if SP were not willing to refund charges so it looks like I'll be doing that.

reduceditem

I keep trying to tell people..............


PAY BY STANDING ORDER!!!!!!!!


You get the same discount as with DD (they don't tell you this, but you do).

A standing order is a fixed amount over which they have no control.

Calculate your usage over the last 12 months in £'s, divide it by 12 and tell them you want to pay that amount by standing order.........they'll send you a standing order letter confirming the agreed amount that you send back to them.

Bingo, no more surprises.

If you do it now you'll very likely be in plenty of credit when next autumn comes around. If you start to be behind you can always phone up and make an extra payment to top up.


Direct debits are a bad thing. It's like opening your wallet and saying 'help yourself to however much you want'.