Scottish Power Direct Debit rises - how to avoid it

cazmanian_minx

Hopefully someone might find my experiences yesterday useful.

A bit of background - my ex moved out of the flat in April 2006. He was disabled and at home 24/7, usually with the heating on (gas) plus two televisions, a DVD player, PS2 and computer all fired up and running for anything up to 20 hours a day. You can imagine that this resulted in pretty hefty bills and my direct debit was running at £50.50 a month for a 1-bed flat.

After he moved out, the first readings I entered gave me a bill of £30 for the spring/summer quarter. I then got £60 for summer/autumn and the autumn/winter one I entered last week came in at £137 (I'm now working from home, which has pushed it up a bit) - still a HUGE decrease from the £244 the previous year.

I'd emailed Scottish Power back in September and asked if I could reduce my direct debit as I was in credit with them after the bill. They said that I'd have to wait for the annual assessment in January and it would be done automatically for me then. So I was more than a bit surprised to get a statement and letter from Scottish Power yesterday telling me it was going UP to £55.50!

Now, as you know, the way Scottish Power's (and most power companies') direct debit scheme works is that you're in credit over the summer and arrears over the winter. Scottish Power even send you a handy little sine wave graph when you sign up with them to explain this.

However, the bloke on the phone said that the reason my DD had been put up was because I owed them £52.40 - so I obviously hadn't paid them enough over the year to cover all my useage and they'd upped it by that amount divided by 12 so I was covered next year.

When I stopped spluttering, I explained to him that their own literature said that customers would ALWAYS be in arrears over the winter period, explained that my power use had dropped drastically and asked him to compare the bill I'd just entered to the bill for the same period last year. "Oh," he said. "It's £100 less."

He said that they can keep the DD the same if you pay off the underpayment by card. He also advised that if I take monthly readings instead of quarterly ones for a bit I can then apply in April (when they can see a pattern and have a full year's worth of readings since my ex moved out) to have the DD reduced.

Blooming cheeky though, to do the reassessment at a time when they KNOW their customers will be underpaying - it means that every customer is guaranteed to get an increase at a time when wholesale power prices are falling :mad:

Caz

samcantcope

i'm with sainsbury energy which is part of scottish power, and I had the same sort of experience, we paid £50 a month for both gas and electric, I didnt think it was enough but the guy we signed up with said it should be fine, then 12 months later they contacted us to say we need to increase to £111 a month to cover the shortfall which we did as they said after 12 months it should drop to £72 a month, and then 6 months later it went up again to £142 a month, I contacted them and told them no way.the guy said it is reviewed every 3 months and they will look at our account again leaving it at £111. we will wait and see in 3 months.
we are seriously watching what we do with gas and electric and reducing where we can, which isnt easy with 2 kids under 3.

patcat

Have just had the same treatment with Scottish Gas. Had been paying £60 per month DD for their Online, no standing charge tarriff. Had tried to increase DD amount to £70 in October, but were told that we couldnt do it, had to wait for reassessment in January. then in December paid off £150 which we were in arrrears. So January we were actually £8 in credit. but SP wanted to increase DD to £88. I said no way had quite a 'heated discussion' if you know what I mean. They would not budge, Even talked to a Supervisor who said even if he reduced it a bit, we would still be re-assessed in 3 months and it would go up even more.
Even tried top change to the Online Saver 2 which they were quite happy to do as it would save approx £50 a year, they still wouldnt reduce the DD. Needless to say have now switched to NPower giving them my total KWhours for the year from SP and they want £72 per month, which is a lot better.

tripled

From reading your post I guess you mean Scottish Power not Scottish Gas patcat?

patcat

whoops, 'course I do, Senior moment there I think. Scottish Power, rip off merchants that they are. LOL

georgiasmum

have exactly the same problem. My electric with them has more than doubled! I have economy 7 heating as well and I know this is expensive! Customer services are unhelpful and I tried uswitch and it seems that they are still the most economical.... what to do....????