Demand to refund refund.

CarefulBill

Hi.

Moved house recently and submitted final meter readings to Scottish Power for our gas and electric.
They processed this and sent a cheque for £75 (we were in credit) to our new address.
Moving house is costly, this cheque was banked and spent.

Lo and behold, an ammended bill pops through a week later saying we owe them £60+

apparently they processed the gas and electric meter readings the wrong way round and we were only £15 in credit.

They essentially want us to refund the majority of their miscalculated refund with money we no longer have.

On the one hand, since we used the gas and electric we would wish to pay for it, on the other hand this is surely their mistake and we shouldn't be recieving demands related to a closed account?

We cannot afford to pay them back this month at any rate, and probably next month either.

Should we be accepting the charges at all and if we should how long can we ask them to wait?


All thoughts and advice appreciated.

CarefulBill

Cardew

'Processing gas and electricty readings the wrong way around' does not sound plausible.

The normal reason is the final bill - which triggered the refund - was based on meter readings that have been challenged by the new occupants.

You need to get a detailed written explanation for the new amended bill. If the new bill is correct, then you do owe the money, albeit many companies will write off such a sum.(unless you supplied incorrect readings)

Deal with this quickly or it will be passed to a Debt Collection Agency

CarefulBill

Hi Cardew.

It only doesn't sound plausible if you assume any level of competence.

Their online account tracker is near indecipherable but they definitely took the final electric meter reading as the final gas reading, despite me enterining them correctly online AND emailing them to customer services.

They didn't register the final electric reading the same day despite them being submitted together.(?!)

So the first refund looks to be based on an estimated electricity reading and the incorrect gas reading.

The actual electricity reading is less than their estimate, which is why we should have been £15 in credit, but the correctly applied gas reading inflates the gas bill by £60 from their "Final" bill.

Despite a promise that we would be given a reason for the new bill within 24hrs, it took SP nearly a week to work out what they'd done themselves.

As for the £60, the point is we don't have it!
Having sent them the correct readings and recieving a cheque, we banked and spent it towards a structural engineers report.

Do we have to pay them immediately no matter what, and hope no structural damage to the house is caused by the delay to building works? We can't pay for Building Control Permissions without that £60

Or can we ask them to wait for us to redress THEIR mistake?

Or can we tell them to stick it, which I'm increasingly minded to do.

jalexa

CarefulBill wrote: »

Or can we tell them to stick it, which I'm increasingly minded to do.

Only if you have a confirmed mortgage offer and won't be seeking credit in the near future.

CarefulBill

We've bought the house.
Survey picked up work urgently needed doing, so that's our priority now we've moved in.

Was considering switching back to Scottish Power in future based on their excellent service but they've "Scotched" that!

Is this not the same as being collared outside a restaurant that mistakenly undercharged you when you dined there the week before?

Or Sainsbury's writing to demand payment for a meal that it turns out wasn't on 3 for 2 when you did your shopping ten days ago, but went through the till as such?

It was their error, made depite me submitting the correct information (the correct way round!) both online AND to customer services.

If they'd wanted to take a little extra time to calculate our final bill properly we'd have been ok with that, but they're trying to grab back money they refunded through their own incompetence at our inconvenience and expense which I'm less than ok with!

Mulder00

Cardew wrote: »

'Processing gas and electricty readings the wrong way around' does not sound plausible.

The normal reason is the final bill - which triggered the refund - was based on meter readings that have been challenged by the new occupants.

You need to get a detailed written explanation for the new amended bill. If the new bill is correct, then you do owe the money, albeit many companies will write off such a sum.(unless you supplied incorrect readings)

Deal with this quickly or it will be passed to a Debt Collection Agency

Very plausible when it comes to Scottish Power. It took me a month to get them to correct a bill because despite having the readings correct, they allocated them to the incorrect dates, making it look like we'd use more electricity/gas than what we actually did. It was a painful process to get them to sort it out finally.

Not sure about the OP's problem though, thing is, what would you have done had you not got the money and had to pay for the bills any way? I mean, somewhere you would have been short the money, so you would have had to find it from somewhere - this just happened to be an (incorrect) windfall.

CarefulBill

Mulder00 wrote: »

what would you have done had you not got the money and had to pay for the bills any way? I mean, somewhere you would have been short the money, so you would have had to find it from somewhere - this just happened to be an (incorrect) windfall.

We had enough for the engineers and could have made our apologies for our friend's birthday meal.

We attended the meal, believing we could afford to do so and still pay for the structural engineers.

Having done so, and paid for both, we cannot afford to simply cough up.
To quote Liam Byrne, "there's no money left"

SP have finally unravelled their own b*lls up, but that doesn't mean we can un-eat the birthday meal. If we could, I'd happily send that to them in a jiffy bag.

Cardew

CarefulBill wrote: »

Or can we ask them to wait for us to redress THEIR mistake?

Or can we tell them to stick it, which I'm increasingly minded to do.

We should firstly establish one point, a firm(or indeed a client) making a mistake does not prevent them correcting that mistake. e.g. a bank wrongly crediting money to your account or a firm mistakenly giving you a refund.

There is some substance in 'case law' that if you were unaware that the refund was a mistake, and you spent it(i.e. your situation) you might 'get away' with not repaying the debt. see:

http://www.money.co.uk/article/1005023-can-you-keep-money-accidentally-paid-into-your-bank-account.htm

If you did not realise that you were given it in error. This
argument was first used successfully back in 1950 in a case between Lloyds Bank
and Cecily Kate Brooks. Ms Brooks, expecting a similar payment to the amount
wrongly credited to her account, argued that she had genuinely spent the money
while believing it belonged to her. Generally, this kind of case tends to be the
exception rather than the rule and pleading ignorance is likely to fall upon
deaf ears unless the amount involved is tiny.

However unless you sort the matter out with Scottish Power, I suspect it will be passed to a DCA. Whilst it is unlikely to get to court, as jalexa implies above, it will affect your credit record.

Terrylw1

It also cuts both ways since if they overcharged you would be demanding a correction so you are not overcharged.

Its a small sum, so can you make an agreement to pay by X date?

You can choose to fight them if you wish but you would have to raise a complaint to prevent escalation to DCA's and then you can escalate it to the ombudsman after 8 weeks. However, do you think the ombudsman will rule in your favour? The issue after all seems more the timing than the need to pay it back and the mistake.

zerog

If you agree that the bill they have sent you now is correct, then just pay them the next time your salary comes in.

Scottish_Power

Hi CarefulBill,

Can you please e-mail me at [EMAIL="onlinecomplaints@scottishpower.com"]onlinecomplaints@scottishpower.com[/EMAIL] and I can have a look at te account for you

Thanks

Marie@scottishpower