75% increase?!

jacquelinehardie

I have a prepayment (powercard) meter with Scottish Power. I'm usually £8-£10 a week (I always buy two powercards but never use them all in the one week). About 3 weeks ago the meter reader came and as he was stepping out the door he said, "Oh, I've put a slight increase on you there." And disappeared.

Fair enough I thought - until I realised I'm now £17.50 a week in bloody powercards! I'm not paying off old debt and can appreciate the rates have gone up but by more than 75%?? Can that be right???

I was going to phone them to complain but what can I say, or indeed, will they actually do anything about it? I'm not keen to change to having a bill every quarter but I can't afford that extra cash every week, particularly in light of the fact my usage hasn't gone up!

(2 bed flat, gas central heating/hob)

I'd appreciate your comments before I rant at them, cheers

masonic

You should be able to get your meter to display the rates it is charging you. You can then compare them to the rates you should be paying to see if anything is amiss.

shellsuit

I've got a meter with Scottish Power and in the last 3 months it has been set high then back down to low 8 times!!

Infact I've received a letter today from them to say they are coming out next Wednesday to either read or reset the meter.

1. It was read less than 2 weeks ago (and they guy said he had to put it up - I told him exactly where to go!)
2. It is set on the lowest setting as I don't owe them a penny, so why on earth is someone coming to fiddle with the meter again?!

Ring them up and ask if there is any balance on your account.

If there is but they shouldn't be, get them to sort it out.

If there isn't, ask for someone to come out and reset the meter back down.

You have my sympathies with SP.......apparantly all the payments I was making on my card from July to October, they had no trace of them!!

They said to me that I owed them X amount as I hadn't paid for any electricity so I asked them how the hell did I have my heating/TV/cooker/PC/lights on etc for the past X months if I wasn't paying for any electricity?!

Apparantly now I've found out, all the missing payments go to somewhere central and instead of them going to Scottish Power, they were going to Southern Electric??

First they asked me if I had a Southern Electric card - errrrrrr NO!
Then they asked if I had been using anyone elses card to buy cards - errrrr No again!

It's a shambles and God knows when it is going to be sorted out!