Scottish Power Online Energy Saver 12

save-a-holic

Was wondering if someone could help me.

I did an online comparison on comparethemarket for utilities. I was with EDF paying £90 a month for the last 3 years. I input my annual figures from the statement for the year 2010-2011. The comparison came back saying the Scottish Power would save me £17 a month so I chose to switch.

Today I've received an email from them to say that the switch has gone through per month!!!!!! That is £31 MORE a month than BEFORE I switched!!!!

I phoned them to explain this and was on the phone (mostly on hold) for 1 HOUR. The girl told me that basically they would not reduce my direct debit as I am a new client. I said OK then forget it and I'll just go back to EDF at £90 a month - she said that would cost me a £50 cancellation charge!!!! I asked to speak to the manager and she said that she would get the Complaints Dept to call me back within the next 48 hours.

I feel TOTALLY duped!!! I didn't agree to pay that much and I transferred because I was agreeing to a smaller deal - not a bigger one. I wish I'd just stayed at EDF. How can they just set the direct debit wherever they feel like it. I am going to be really struggling with this.

Can anyone help?? I don't know if it's pertinent - but my usage over the last year was Electricity - 6,624 kWh, Gas - 22,281kWh. I've tried to find out the Online Saver Rates to do my own calculation but they all look so confusing and I don't understand. How come it was going to cost me so much less on the comparison site.

Really upset.....

Thanks for any help.

Marie

Scottish_Power

Hi Marie

Sorry to hear about your situation and for an confusion that has been caused. I will try my best to explain how you can calculate what you need to pay on an annual basis using the consumption figures provided by you.

The link below should provide you with the OLE12 tariff rates. Once you have this information you just need to match up the unit rates for your supply area.

http://www.scottishpower.co.uk/pdf/OLESaver12_v1.pdf

The OLE12 tariff is a no standing charge tariff and so you pay a primary rate and also a secondary rate. For electricity you pay the primary rate for the first 225 kWh used per quarter then the secondary rate for the remaining kWh used. For gas you will pay the primary rate for the first 670 kWh used per quarter then the secondary rate for the remaining kWh used.

To work out roughly what you will be paying over a 12-month period for your gas and electricity do the following:

Electricity
900 kWh (225 kWh x 4) @ Primary Rate =
5724 kWh (remaining kWh) @ Secondary Rate =
VAT @ 5% =
Total charge (£ / month) =

Gas
2680 kWh (670 kWh x 4) @ Primary Rate =
19601 kWh (remaining kWh) @ Secondary Rate =
VAT @ 5% =
Total charge (£ / month) =

If you use the above calculations to work out your annual charge (monthly charge) then this should give you a good idea how accurate the Direct Debit payment of £121 is.

Please let me know if you have any further questions once you have calculated your annual charge.

Kind Regards

Colin @ ScottishPower

save-a-holic

Thank you so much for that :j- I've done my calculations as follows:

Electricity
900 kWh (225 kWh x 4) @ 17.176 = 15458.4
5724 kWh (remaining kWh) @ 7.795 = 44618.58
VAT @ 5% = 3003.849
Annual Electricity Costs = 63080.829

Gas
2680 kWh (670 kWh x 4) @ 4.968 = 13314.24
19601 kWh (remaining kWh) @ 2.581 = 50590.181
VAT @ 5% = 3195.22105
Annual Gas Costs = 67099.64205

Total Annual Energy Cost = 130180.47105
Monthly Costs (converted from pence to £'s) = £108.48

So they have definately set the direct debit too high, but this then opens another can of worms because I still haven't been supplied with what I thought I was buying (i.e. energy at £17 less than my current £90 monthly payments). I put the same annual comsumption figures into the money supermarket website for it to come back with these figures so I don't know if I have been misrepresented by them or by Scottish Power giving these figures to them.....

This seems to be getting complicated

Marie

scottishpower_company_representative wrote: »

Hi Marie

Sorry to hear about your situation and for an confusion that has been caused. I will try my best to explain how you can calculate what you need to pay on an annual basis using the consumption figures provided by you.

The link below should provide you with the OLE12 tariff rates. Once you have this information you just need to match up the unit rates for your supply area.

http://www.scottishpower.co.uk/pdf/OLESaver12_v1.pdf

The OLE12 tariff is a no standing charge tariff and so you pay a primary rate and also a secondary rate. For electricity you pay the primary rate for the first 225 kWh used per quarter then the secondary rate for the remaining kWh used. For gas you will pay the primary rate for the first 670 kWh used per quarter then the secondary rate for the remaining kWh used.

To work out roughly what you will be paying over a 12-month period for your gas and electricity do the following:

Electricity
900 kWh (225 kWh x 4) @ Primary Rate =
5724 kWh (remaining kWh) @ Secondary Rate =
VAT @ 5% =
Total charge (£ / month) =

Gas
2680 kWh (670 kWh x 4) @ Primary Rate =
19601 kWh (remaining kWh) @ Secondary Rate =
VAT @ 5% =
Total charge (£ / month) =

If you use the above calculations to work out your annual charge (monthly charge) then this should give you a good idea how accurate the Direct Debit payment of £121 is.

Please let me know if you have any further questions once you have calculated your annual charge.

Kind Regards

Colin @ ScottishPower

devildog

Although I have no answers re how much you would of saved with Scottish Power have you thought about staying with dd by means of paying but on issue of the quarterly bill as opposed to monthly? When I switched to them(funnily enough from EDF!!) they put me on monthly dd and immediately withdrew their first month's money(despite me saying that I would pay quarterly on receipt of bill).Must say that they were quick enough to rectify the situation though. I know paying quarterly is not for everyone but it is a way around it.

save-a-holic

Actually that might be a great idea!!! At least then (I assume) you are only paying for what you've used? Do they let you know how much they withdraw before it happens so that I can transfer it over in time?

Thank you! :beer:

devildog wrote: »

Although I have no answers re how much you would of saved with Scottish Power have you thought about staying with dd by means of paying but on issue of the quarterly bill as opposed to monthly? When I switched to them(funnily enough from EDF!!) they put me on monthly dd and immediately withdrew their first month's money(despite me saying that I would pay quarterly on receipt of bill).Must say that they were quick enough to rectify the situation though. I know paying quarterly is not for everyone but it is a way around it.

bcl999

devildog wrote: »

Although I have no answers re how much you would of saved with Scottish Power have you thought about staying with dd by means of paying but on issue of the quarterly bill as opposed to monthly? When I switched to them(funnily enough from EDF!!) they put me on monthly dd and immediately withdrew their first month's money(despite me saying that I would pay quarterly on receipt of bill).Must say that they were quick enough to rectify the situation though. I know paying quarterly is not for everyone but it is a way around it.

Scottish Power have just increased my DD by 60% so I was interested in your suggestion here - quarterly payments are no problem for me. I logged in to my account and found a disclaimer saying that to get the cheapest rate elec/gas I have to pay by monthly DD. How does one get around this?

I'm thinking now of switching supplier.

Scottish_Power

Hi Marie,

When you did the online comparison if you entered your usage as £90.00 per month rather than XXXXkWh then you will have been quoted based on a £90.00 per month usage. This can sometimes distort the actual savings, in terms of your monthly payment. You may have been paying £90.00 per month with EDF but had a credit balance of say £240.00 so your actual monthly usage was say £110.00. So if EDF were taking in to account a credit balance your monhtly usage would have been more than £90.00. Alternatively EDF's £90.00 may not have been covering your usage.

The only way you can actually work out if you are making savings with ScottishPower is to now manually calculate your EDF charges as you have done with ours and then compare the totals.

You have worked out your usage at £108.00 per month and currently your Direct Debit with us is £121.00, I have checked your workings and they all seem ok, so if you wish me to change your Direct Debit to £108.00 or to discuss the specifics of your account e-mail me at [EMAIL="onlinecomplaints@scottishpower.com"]onlinecomplaints@scottishpower.com[/EMAIL]

Kind Regards

Graeme @ ScottishPower

Scottish_Power

Hi bcl999,

The majority of current tariffs are only available if paying Monthly by Direct Debit but if they are available with quarterly Direct Debit then the unit rates would increase slightly if you changed to paying this way.

If you wish me to have a look at your account and see if anything can be done about the 60% increase in your Direct Debit, drop me an e-mail with your account details to [EMAIL="onlinecomplaints@scottishpower.com"]onlinecomplaints@scottishpower.com[/EMAIL]

Kind Regards

Graeme @ ScottishPower

devildog

Yes you pay for what you have actually used. You submit your reading online and within a minute you can see what your bill is(was really impressed with the speed of this) and they tell you then what date it will be collected from your account(12/14 days later) so plenty of time to transfer money.

I don't know if there is a way to get around cheaper rates by paying this way. I believed that any payment by dd got you a discounted rate and the comparisons I did online were based on paying quarterly on issue of bill(so still worked out cheaper for me, but maybe I could have made more savings by paying monthly) however I really do not like to pay monthly due to the fact that they can basically take what they want.
I guess it is swings and roundabouts

save-a-holic

Hi Graeme

Many thanks for this - it was most helpful.

Unfortunately I distinctly remember inputting the actual figures from my annual statement (as I had to change the settings from the standard "£ per month" to "usage per year" to input them.

I will await my final account from EDF to see if I was indeed in debt to them.

Does this mean that whenever I do decide to change supplier I will always have to pay this £50 cancellation fee?

As an aside - I would like to thank you for your assistance here on MoneySavingExpert. Unfortunately the official Customer Care at Scottish Power leaves a lot to be desired. I was on the phone for over an hour and got absolutely nowhere as the girl said that she would need to get the Complaints Team to call me back (there was no-one there). She said it would be within the next 48 hours and we are only hours away from that deadline now, with no telephone call at all (from a Customer Care point of view I think it's a bit 'off' that it takes 48 hours to return a call anyway).... It's just lucky that you are here on MoneySavingExpert otherwise I would clearly have been left high and dry.

scottishpower_company_representative wrote: »

Hi Marie,

When you did the online comparison if you entered your usage as £90.00 per month rather than XXXXkWh then you will have been quoted based on a £90.00 per month usage. This can sometimes distort the actual savings, in terms of your monthly payment. You may have been paying £90.00 per month with EDF but had a credit balance of say £240.00 so your actual monthly usage was say £110.00. So if EDF were taking in to account a credit balance your monhtly usage would have been more than £90.00. Alternatively EDF's £90.00 may not have been covering your usage.

The only way you can actually work out if you are making savings with ScottishPower is to now manually calculate your EDF charges as you have done with ours and then compare the totals.

You have worked out your usage at £108.00 per month and currently your Direct Debit with us is £121.00, I have checked your workings and they all seem ok, so if you wish me to change your Direct Debit to £108.00 or to discuss the specifics of your account e-mail me at [EMAIL="onlinecomplaints@scottishpower.com"]onlinecomplaints@scottishpower.com[/EMAIL]

Kind Regards

Graeme @ ScottishPower

Premier_2

save-a-holic wrote: »

Thank you so much for that :j- I've done my calculations as follows:

Electricity
900 kWh (225 kWh x 4) @ 17.176 = 15458.4
5724 kWh (remaining kWh) @ 7.795 = 44618.58
VAT @ 5% = 3003.849
Annual Electricity Costs = 63080.829

Gas
2680 kWh (670 kWh x 4) @ 4.968 = 13314.24
19601 kWh (remaining kWh) @ 2.581 = 50590.181
VAT @ 5% = 3195.22105
Annual Gas Costs = 67099.64205

Total Annual Energy Cost = 130180.47105
Monthly Costs (converted from pence to £'s) = £108.48

So they have definately set the direct debit too high, but this then opens another can of worms because I still haven't been supplied with what I thought I was buying (i.e. energy at £17 less than my current £90 monthly payments). I put the same annual comsumption figures into the money supermarket website for it to come back with these figures so I don't know if I have been misrepresented by them or by Scottish Power giving these figures to them.....

This seems to be getting complicated

Marie

[STRIKE]
There is an error in the VAT on your gas. This should read £30.95
[/STRIKE]
[STRIKE]
This (together with another error) means the total for gas should be £649.99
[/STRIKE]
So total gas & electric would be [STRIKE]£1280.79[/STRIKE] £1301.79

Then there's the discounts that are missing (all prices already include VAT):

Online discount electricity: £10.50
Online discount gas: £ 5.25
Dual fuel discount: £16.80

So total annual price would be: [STRIKE]£1248.24[/STRIKE]£1269.24

This is the price the comparison should have given you, and would relate to a monthly charge of[STRIKE] £104.02 [/STRIKE]£105.77(which SP will round up or down)
As Graeme has already agreed in principle to modify your monthly payments, you should advise him of this monthly figure.

The comparison would have done a similar calculation for your previous EDF tariff and provided you an annual cost, but you don't tell us what that was, only what you were paying EDF which could be something entirely different.
It appears, if what you say is correct, that whilst you were only paying EDF £1080 p.a., they were actually charging you [STRIKE]£1452 [/STRIKE]£1464 p.a.. (which equates to [STRIKE]£121 [/STRIKE]£122 p.m.)
If you say that despite this, you left them with a sizable credit sum, then you must have vastly overpaid at some time in the past.

As for the early exit fee you later ask about, when you agreed to OLESaver 12, you agreed to remain on the tariff until 29 Feb 2012. If you leave earlier, you will incur the appropriate early exit fee.

Edit: As OLESaver 12 is no longer available to new subscribers (OLESaver 13 is now available), the cheapest option currently available to you appears to be BG Websaver 11 at £1273 p.a. (more expensive)
The cheapest EDF deal would be their Fixed price 2013 at £1548 p.a.
So think carefully before choosing to ditch the OLESaver 12 you have recently agreed to.

Edit 2: Remaining with SP but paying quarterly by DD would cost you £1578 p.a.. Whilst this payment method was attractive in certain situations previously, SP decision in their last price revisions to massively reduce their prompt payment discount (which paying quarterly by DD guaranteed) means it is far less attractive today