Scottish Power - A Warning about Charges

BenRB007

I decided to leave scottish power at the end of my deal with them - however they still tried to charge me almost £50 in cancellation fees even though I left after the deal ended .

Their pathetic excuse was that if they received notification from your new energy supplier before the deal end date ‘it counts against you’ (their words) and they will charge you - even though you stayed to end of the contract and they have no legal basis to do that.

So check that final bill carefully!

grahamc2003

BenRB007 wrote: »

I decided to leave scottish power at the end of my deal with them - however they still tried to charge me almost £50 in cancellation fees even though I left after the deal ended .

Their pathetic excuse was that if they received notification from your new energy supplier before the deal end date ‘it counts against you’ (their words) and they will charge you - even though you stayed to end of the contract and they have no legal basis to do that.

So check that final bill carefully!

If you are confident that 'they have no legal basis', then simply sue them in the small claims court, which is very easy to do.

But I think your confidence may be misplaced, and I bet the agreement you signed stated the charge is payable if they receive notification of cancellation before the end date (but I could be wrong of course). Could you type out the termination clause of the contract you agreed to and signed?

BenRB007

I entered into an agreement with Scottish Power to buy power from them until the 30 April - which is what I did - just because I told them I was going to leave at the end of the contract doesn't give them the right to try and rip you off with spurious charges

I phoned them and said I'd take them to the small claims court to recover the money - and after the usual call centre run around - they suddenly decided to refund the money.

These people are not above the law!

DUTR

BenRB007 wrote: »

I entered into an agreement with Scottish Power to buy power from them until the 30 April - which is what I did - just because I told them I was going to leave at the end of the contract doesn't give them the right to try and rip you off with spurious charges

I phoned them and said I'd take them to the small claims court to recover the money - and after the usual call centre run around - they suddenly decided to refund the money.

These people are not above the law!

When did you take out the agreement?

jalexa

BenRB007 wrote: »

I phoned them and said I'd take them to the small claims court to recover the money ...

A tip I'd offer, use the Energy Ombudsman route before legal action. Using the EO does not prevent subsequent legal action but the EO route cannot be followed subsequent to legal action.

I think this issue has been raised previously in the Forum. Terms and conditions differ, but a typical current Scottish Power T&C says this...

"3. If you cancel your...contract by switching to another gas and/or electricity supplier before [ date ] we will apply cancellation charges."

I do not believe "initiating a switch" reasonably counts as "switching".

Terrylw1

Its a con they all seem to be trying on. After all, it it was a legitimate contract term, they wouldn't back down easily when you complain...you are leaving so they don't care about you anymore.

EDF have been shown to try this on.

After your cooling off period ends, your new supplier sends a data flow to the distributor which states who the new supplier is and their intended future registration date. This date has to be within the next 28 days but has to give the old supplier time to object, typically 5 days. The day after the distributor gets this, they send a different data flow containing the new supplier ID and the intended switch date.

All data flows have a date/time stamp on them for processing reasons & to give an audit trail since they are saved in a history format by all parties for later use.

The date/time stamp is not a switch date. You could leave 27 days later after your contract has ended.

So unless the terms specify receipt date, they can't justify what they are doing.

I can't see them putting a date/time stamp term in and I can't see Ofgem allowing it.

Its yet another sneaky trick aimed at duping the uninformed.

I hope lots of these customers escalate it so we can see just how much cash the suppliers have conned out of people.

backfoot

Scottish Power do this all the time and of course they are wrong.

This has cropped up many times on the forum.It's a systematic failure of theirs because they operate some form of paper intervention which conveniently gets forgotten.

I can recall threads where they had even issued written instructions to advise them of a switch by a certain date in advance of the contract end date. They then tried to charge exit fees. :rotfl:

Uhh mi lud, I don't think this one stands up

themull1

BT do exactly the same thing if you try and move to a different provider, i just told them show me where it says i have to pay a charge in my contract, and they backed down.

forestlands

About to leave OVO contract ends 27th July, Had EDF chase me for money 3 months after final bill paid - like an after thought, ending contract plus we now worked out you owe us! Meter reading etc done. Plan on switching through comparison web site stating i would like the change date to be 27th July. Please can anyone see any pos probs! Thanks very much!