scotish Power admit fault - so should I pay

sevlow

I wont bore you all with the details, but after a recent dispute about a gas bill SP have written to me to apologise and confirm that due to an error on their part in Jan04 (when I moved to them) they have wrongly calculated my bill & although they have had several readings from me in the interim they failed to act on them.
The upshot is I now owe the circal £600 and they want to recover this over the next 24 months.

I'm not disputing I have used this value of gas but feel I have been open & honest with them & why should I bear the full cost??

What liability do I have and am i being reasonable??

tripled

Have they given you a discount off the bill? If not, make a complaint, if they don't give you anything complain to the energy ombudsman.

Quentin

Your liability is for the full amount you owe.

If they had billed you correctly you would have had to pay them the £600 already, so you are doing alright from the deal - especially as they are allowing you another 2 years "interest free" to clear the debt.

As you knew the bills you were getting were incorrect, you also knew there was going to be a day of reckoning.

Look on it as a good deal - you have had the use of the money, and continue to do so.

moonrakerz

As they have admitted that it was their errors that created your debt, it might be worth offering them £300 "in full and final settlement" - they can only say no, or offer another figure between your 300 and their 600.

sevlow

Thanks for your input - just a couple of points;

No - I did not know we were underpaying. The first I new was when I went to input a regular reading on their website and realised there was a huge difference in their estimate and my reading(this was a couple of months ago). I immediately telephoned them and they said they would get the meter read.

The meter man came a few weaks later and subsequenly we received another estmated bill with a reading( still estimated) I phoned them again and they said they would use my reading - This generated a bill of £3500. I complained by telephone and was told I would have to pay.

Luckily I found a bill prom SWEB our previous supplier for the month before we moved to SP. When I wrote to them they apologised and said they had used zero meter reading when we swithched.

my point of issue is that there must be some responsibilty on a supplier to bill correctly - what if they had gone after the 3.5k ...? OK I can afford the payments but to some folk an extra £30 a month has a real impact.

Gal

Is there a reason why its taken you 3 years to notice that? You've used it so its only fair you pay - They have spread the balance over a long period so technically your paying it back at £25 a month.

The full and final settlement idea - Would just get rejected full stop. Suppliers are trying to get everything sorted out before July when the guidelines change to 1 year catch ups. So I would expect a few more of these in the next couple of months.

They have admitted fault but can still ask you for payment as they have been sending out bills with estimates on - You could have corrected it between the date you joined them and now.

Thing I find wierd is how SWEB billed you considering they supposed to use the reading from your new supplier???

sevlow

Gal,

Here is a quote from the SP letter explaining their error;

" We started your account with an opening meter reading 0 and since then all your Gas bills have been incorrectly estimated.

An Independent Gas Transporter owns your Gas meter and I am unable to check meter readings taken by meter readers over the last 3 years. It is likely the meter readings have been rejected due to the incorrect estimated readings we have used to bill your account.

I have checked through the notes on your account and see you have provided Gas readings on 3 occasions, unfortunately we have not disputed these readings and continued to estimate your account.........Please accept our apologies once again for the problems you have experienced with your account and also for the poor service you have received. I hope that with the position of your account now clarified, you can now look towards a bright future with ScottishPower."

It seems reasonable to me that where customers have acted properly and have no reason to believe there is a problem with what they are paying then there must be a limit on what and for how long suppliers can expect to recover their losses.

Would you feel comfortable with a large tax demand because the IR had made an error 5 years ago - and feel well done by because you had two years left to pay it back. What other supplier can be so laxed in it's administration happy in the knowledge that they can always recover the error at anytime in the future.

BritishGasWorker

sevlow wrote: »

I wont bore you all with the details, but after a recent dispute about a gas bill SP have written to me to apologise and confirm that due to an error on their part in Jan04 (when I moved to them) they have wrongly calculated my bill & although they have had several readings from me in the interim they failed to act on them.
The upshot is I now owe the circal £600 and they want to recover this over the next 24 months.

I'm not disputing I have used this value of gas but feel I have been open & honest with them & why should I bear the full cost??

What liability do I have and am i being reasonable??

hi

sorry me dear but you have to pay for it..you could ask for a discount...we would give you 10% off the total....but thats it..its your responsablilty to call them if you notice an error...