MSE news: Scottish & Southern Energy to suspend doorstep selling

Former_MSE_Archna

This is the discussion thread for the following MSE News Story:

"Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) will suspend doorstep selling with immediate effect, it revealed today."

Read the full story:
Scottish & Southern Energy to suspend doorstep selling

Cardew

Ring almost any Utility Company sales centre and enquire about their tariff.

Act dumb! and tell them all you know is you are paying, say, £100 a month by Direct Debit to xx company.

I guarantee after a couple of perfunctory questions most of the time they will offer to beat that Direct Debit payment! They will make no attempt to discover actual circumstances.

If sales staff are paid on commission, there will always be mis-selling.

In evidence given to the Parliamentary Committee on Energy it was stated that a high percentage(20%?? - 30%??) of consumers actually switched to a higher priced tariff.

conshibs

One of the reason why sse has suspended doorstep selling is because they have been prosecuted 2 months ago for mis-selling and are under further investigation by ofgem for more breaches of mis-selling, and the other striking reason is that from the start of this month july ofgem has introduced a mystery shopper to monitor and record the big 6 energy consultants sales technique to prospectus customers.So has a result sse decided to withdraw the whole of there field sales advisors because of there misleading information to customers.

onlyroz

I remember when I was young and naive, I was talked into switching to London Electricity by a door-step salesman. He virtually forced the pen into my hand, and told me that I *must* sign the paperwork. I felt really threatened and so I signed. When my husband came home he rang them up and gave them an earful.

davidgmmafan

Cardew wrote: »

Ring almost any Utility Company sales centre and enquire about their tariff.

Act dumb! and tell them all you know is you are paying, say, £100 a month by Direct Debit to xx company.

I guarantee after a couple of perfunctory questions most of the time they will offer to beat that Direct Debit payment! They will make no attempt to discover actual circumstances.

If sales staff are paid on commission, there will always be mis-selling.

In evidence given to the Parliamentary Committee on Energy it was stated that a high percentage(20%?? - 30%??) of consumers actually switched to a higher priced tariff.

The first bit would be wrong if they speak to me as I routinely refuse to offer a quote unless the customer has a years consumption. If they insist on using the payment amount or the monetary amount from thier bill last year I will proceed on the basis that it won't be accurate and is for information only ie I'd do the quote but not the sale.

There again I'm just a customer service guy, I believe people who were more highly targeted would engage in the dodgy tactics you refer to.

The last bit is alarming and means they should probably all stop this non-sense. Frankly I speak to too many customers who say things like I was told the payment would remain the same regardless of consumption, which are ridiculous, for them to be making it up.

I was thinking of a thread to discuss this but don't want to duplicate, would anyone care to participate?

I wasn't going to gloat (well not much) but I was going to open by saying something like I've speculated before that maybe door to door sales actually makes a negative contribution because it costs money in terms of complaints and reputation. This was just thinking out loud but I wonder if this development and similar comments by BG suggest this is the case?

backfoot

As I have pointed out many times before,the process is essentially flawed simply because the salesperson doesn't offer the lowest priced alternative.

If they did it may serve a useful purpose. As they never do, it is a con.:D

Until they do, Ofgem should ban the process.

bob_a_builder

One issue related to a sales script, which led salesmen to claim consumers were paying too much and could save by switching to SSE when they had no idea if this was true.

But they all say that, whoever they are from !!

Maybe the SSE mistake was in writing it down

Ban the lot of them !!

grudz

Before I discovered MSE, I had a knock on the door from a SSE salesman and promised me cheaper electricity and only have to pay £35 per month. At the time, I genuinely thought I was on to a winner as this slashed my bill by over 50%. Then came the 12 month review and my payments were increased to a staggering £125 per month. By then, I had been following MSE and decided to switch to a cheaper deal with a different company. Obviously, because I left them I had to pay a final bill of over £500. I struggled with it and was eventually passed on to a collection agency. 2 years have passed and I am still paying it off, as there's no interest on it I agreed to the lowest repayment plan I could go on so I could concentrate on other debts.

This whole ordeal could have been avoided if the company acted responsibly when selling a product. I feel I was mis-sold my electric and by the time I had realised it, a year had already passed and it was too late.

davidgmmafan

I bet if you mentioned it now they'd say something outstanding like as you didn't raise it in the first year we can't investigate it. They're great like that