Scottish Power told me I cant leave

ktflower

Please help!
I phoned e.on to change my electricity over to them from Scottish Power and was told that they couldnt supply elecrticity to the type of meter we have. When i phoned Scottish Power, they said they were the only energy provider who can supply electricity to that meter. The said that we wouldnt be able to get another provider in our area, can this be true? if so, what happened to healthy competition? im really worried about next years bill as last winters was sky high as it is

Does anyone know of anything we can do???
Thanks in advance
Kt

st999

Other than change your heating, nothing.

ktflower

Unfortunately, there is no central heating plumbed into the building so we would have to pay about £2000 to have the pavement outside dug up and it put into our building and then prob another £2k to have it set up in our flat with radiators etc. :-(

meggsy

A relative of mine was looking to switch from Southern and found that they couldn't as well the system has three dials on the meter.

ktflower

Yep, ours is a three rate meter as well as we have storage heaters that are supposed to run on a lower rate all the time. I dont understand how this is allowed to happen- why arent we allowed to have healthy competition between energy providers - instead we will have to accept a bill of hundreds and are not able to do anything about it :-(

Premier_2

No one is preventing competition.

It is just no other supplier wishes to supply you with your set up.
(If the truth be known, I bet the legacy supplier doesn't either ... but they are obligated to)

Tharweb

ktflower wrote: »

Does anyone know of anything we can do???
Thanks in advance
Kt

If you are stuck with them, do they not have a cheaper tariff that you can switch to?

sunflower_2

ive never heard of a 3-rate meter
they must be very rare??

could u not just have a 2 rate meter instead and store the heaters during the night?

seafarers_wife

if its an economy 10 meter i think there are only a couple of suppliers that support that heating system. you could switch to economy 7 but parts of your current heating system wouldnt work because of it.

in the long run though, how much would you save by shelling out about 5K to have a different heating system put in, would after say 5years would it have paid for itself or will it take longer to recoup the cost?