Scottish Power overcharged me £1300 and are evading making a refund

Andy_WSM

This thread is nuts!

Spcustomer - you may have turned off the fuse board for "low rate" energy, but any power consumed, anywhere in the house during off peak hours will still register on the low reading - your misunderstanding is adding to the confusion & problems here.

Having read the whole thread, best thing Scottish Power could do is pull the plug on your supply and take you to court.

Dovah_diva

spcustomer you are totally loopy. What a load of waffle and crap.

I was overcharged by E-On once. I followed the correct procedure and got a full refund. Refusal to pay is never a wise move. Still, you know best, eh?

Hilarious. Gonna subscribe.

spcustomer

Thanks for your input, but apart from DragonQ you others seem not to have read the whole thread.

So Dragon: I am not sure that I would expect much help from the CEO of a company that cannot account for it's own bills and declares 'actual' meter readings when no reading are made, but if I get some time I might try.

AndyWSM: you will see that the question of E7 was discussed and resolved some time back.

Douva_diva: Who decides the correct procedure? If it is SP they are bound to arrange something that will go in their favour. Is my procedure any less correct than theirs?

Are you all, by any chance, working for or on behalf of Scottish Power?

The fact remains that Scottish Power have never accounted for why they overcharged me by two years' worth of electricity. It cannot alter until they come up with a proper explanation.

dude89

spcustomer wrote: »

Are you all, by any chance, working for or on behalf of Scottish Power?

[/B]

You got to love it when people give advice that the OP doesn't like, they then get accused of working for the company involved.

Scottish_Power

spcustomer we have advised you to contact the Energy Ombudsman for an independent review of your case. That option remains open to you. In the meantime we will continue to request full payment and if this is not made we will seek to obtain a warrant to fit a prepayment meter.

David

DragonQ

spcustomer wrote: »

Thanks for your input, but apart from DragonQ you others seem not to have read the whole thread.

So Dragon: I am not sure that I would expect much help from the CEO of a company that cannot account for it's own bills and declares 'actual' meter readings when no reading are made, but if I get some time I might try.

AndyWSM: you will see that the question of E7 was discussed and resolved some time back.

Douva_diva: Who decides the correct procedure? If it is SP they are bound to arrange something that will go in their favour. Is my procedure any less correct than theirs?

Are you all, by any chance, working for or on behalf of Scottish Power?

The fact remains that Scottish Power have never accounted for why they overcharged me by two years' worth of electricity. It cannot alter until they come up with a proper explanation.

BBC's Watchdog is another option maybe? The only thing you need to make sure of is that you have sufficient evidence of this money being taken.

If I had a company that had taken a grand of someone's money without reason I'd be appalled that it wasn't being returned, even if it was 10 years ago. Just because that's legally too long ago to be "reclaimable" doesn't mean they can't repay it. Maybe that's just me.

I'm with ScottishPower and they've always been helpful so am quite surprised at this situation. Maybe because there is a debt on your account that puts the "red alert" on and they won't help with anything until it's paid.

keiran

scottishpower_company_representative wrote: »

spcustomer we have advised you to contact the Energy Ombudsman for an independent review of your case. That option remains open to you. In the meantime we will continue to request full payment and if this is not made we will seek to obtain a warrant to fit a prepayment meter.

David

Just to make the general point that the "Energy Ombudsman" is neither independent nor impartial, as many threads in this forum will indicate.

Just because it says it is independent doesn't mean it is!

My understanding is that the EO was formed , at the request of Ofgem ( which did not want to deal with pesky and irritating consumer complaints), by the energy companies themselves. Therefore it is hardly surprising that the EO sees matters from the energy companies' point of view. There hasn't been creeping regulatory capture ( as happens with other regulators): the whole system was designed like this to begin with.

The only reason a rational consumer should refer their energy company to the EO is so that the company has to pay a hefty referral fee ( £375 in 2012) to the EO. But don't waste a lot of time/energy making your case..not worth it

Nada666

DragonQ wrote: »

BBC's Watchdog is another option maybe?

From the severity of SPcustomer's claims (their telephone staff somehow know where his family lives, don't you know,) I think The Digger may be the more appropriate media outlet for him

spcustomer

First of all: unless SP have managed to send me an email attachment that has deleted all of theirs to me I will still have sufficient evidence on one or both of two computers, and as far as I know if I have been pursuing the sum periodically over the years more often than every 6 years the cut-off idea does not apply. I think that is just one of the ideas that the companies like to put about. It's called the Statute of Limitation.

I will have a look at The Digger.

I did actually finally send a third complaint to the (non) independent ombudsman service, but because of SP David's correspondence ('you have complained on a number of occasions') I had to just quote the date of starting this present thread. Frankly I don't hold out any hope in this direction. I am pretty sure they will find some way of getting SP off the hook. Probably the simplest thing for them to do would be to decide either (a) I have given the wrong date, or (b) the original date was too long ago! Kafka is hard work but amusing to read, although I have to say I have never found my way all the way to the end of any of his books.

I have been speculating all the way through this thread about whether the initial fiddle was done by a criminal network working within SP - and of course even if SP did detect such a thing they would not want to publicise the fact (and would also have to compensate me and probably hundreds of others as a result) so I don't think we will hear about it.

Pineapple88

I have read through all six pages of this thread and I have got to say that am I just as confused as I was on page one! It seems that very little light has been shed on the sitaution in 110 posts which mostly seem to consist of threats an accusations. SPCustomer I understand that you are very frustrated with the lenght of time that the dispute has gone on for but as an outsider reading this it doesn't seem like you really want the situation to be resolved; you appear to only want to prove you point and the longer it goes on the more it confirms your theory (I may be wrong on this, just my two cents worth (and no, I don't work for SP).

Have you contacted the Ombudsman again? If so what did they say?

What resolution do you want to get out of the case? Do you just want the debt to be written off as you believe it is incorrect or do you want a write off plus a refund of £1000?

I am still unclear about how the origianl debt accrued. Was it through non payment or was it a catch up bill (a SP letter on one of the earlier pages apppeared to indicate that your bills had been estimated and this is the reason the £1300 credit was reduced to £300).

I know you have requsted copies of bills which haven't been issued. My exprience of SP is that they bill you every three months but will only send you quarterly bills if your payments need to change (which is more likely with an estimated bill). If your payments remain the same over the year then you will just receive one annual bill. Therefore you should have been sent at least one bill a year detailing your payments and meter readings. Do you have these? If so prehaps you could post details of these and we may be able to work out how the original £1300 credit was reduced? The bills may also be online for you to print off if you do not have them?