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

spcustomer

Readers should read this with the knowledge that Scottish Power are allowed by MSE to edit posts mentioning them.

At last! I managed to get past the multiple barriers and into court.

Certain matters that might be of interest to those persons who have a dispute with an energy company have shown up, and a lot of possible explanations as to why these companies are so devious might be found. To me, the matter is one of morality more than anything else. I am not a Quaker, nor am I of any other religion, but the greatest levels of morality, business integrity and civilised behaviour I have found in this world have been found amongst Quakers. So that is the standard I would like to attain myself. I doubt that I do so, but it is most enjoyable to try.

The hearing.

Statute of limitation.

The judge was very polite and helpful - something I thoroughly appreciate.He explained to me the flaws in my understanding of the Statute of Limitation and therefore the flaws in my case, and I ought to try to make it clear to everyone else the bit most of us have probably misunderstood:

Under this act, if you believe or know that someone owes you some money and they are ignoring your requests for settlement you must take the matter before a court before 6 years have passed.. If you do not, you are out of time and cannot proceed. Keeping on asking them will get you nowhere, and after 6 years they can fully ignore you instead of only partly. Large 'public' utilities know this fact (because most of their attempts to get money are not about serving the public but about grabbing money from them? Possible.

If, on the other hand, the defendant (in this case Scottish Power) pay you a pound they will have said by so doing that they accept they owe you money, and given you a further period of 6 years from the date they give you the pound. Of course, if they pay the full claim that's the matter settled. So the sort of wisdom that such companies as this is one that says either pay him nothing or give him a pound (the former being preferable) .Many people would call this shocking and corrupt behaviour, but it seems to be common.

If,on the other hand, you feel you have discovered genuine fraud as I think I have done, there is no statute of limitation and our poor underfunded overworked police force are supposed to investigate the matter with the highest diagnostic skills they can muster. Unfortunately, the goverment have made it pretty near impossible for the police to do any such thing by removing so much funding that they have no ground troops or offices. I imagine certain politicians like it that way and will leave things as they are until it is impossible to avoid doing something or until the problem reaches them personally. There are better countries in the world.

The fraud

It took a very great deal of effort to get a few emails off that crashed hard drive, and I retrieved several email addresses which were associated with the fraud. I gave the barrister for the defence a copy of these email addresses but I doubt that they still exist. However, if they as a company are the crooks I believe them to be (fair comment, I think they call that) they might find them useful to 'investigate' and discover a culprit. If, on the other hand, they do nothing about it, they are already showing lack of due diligence and are continuing to do so by doing nothing. Very near illegal, but possibly not..

As far as the money was concerned, the judge found that I was out of time (with which I now must agree owing to his teachings) but he then asked me if there was anything else. That gave me the chance to explain that I was not particularly interested in the money but in getting my elecrticty cut off. He ruled that SP should cut it off within x number days, and I hope he awarded me costs. The £6000 claim was not indispensible to me, but it would be nice to have a little to spend on the solar installation, which is now about 5 years behind schedule partly because of SP's equipment trespassing on my property.

Scottish Power had alleged they had a contract with me, but I still have not seen it despite numerous requests. Dodgey.

And as it is more than a week from the court's decision and SP have not tried to contact me to arrange a date for disconnection I rather wonder if they are trying to work out how to avoid doing as odered. How seedy can you get?

I have made a report to the police (Action Fraud) and I hope they will find it useful

Customer disputes

To any utility company with a lot of greed in it a customer dispute is invalueable, and a great many people in this district have one going. We are a fount of plenty for energy companies, mainly because of the level of poverty here.

From SP's point of view a customer dispute has the huge value of 'leverage' (one might call it), and stops the customer being able to change suppliers whilst at the same time enabling SP to add endless 'penalty charges' (as far as I know they are within the law to do this if arrears are alleged!). That could easily be stretched to 6 years..

So perhaps that is the most effective way to deal with the poor!

(Thank you Mrs. Thatcher. As a shareholder in a greedy company my dividends are hugely better - about £1 per week! Have you thought of everyone else?

National electricity

Some people may be old enough to remember that once we had a national grid and a national power company with branches all over the place (during the war we took our radio accumulators to the power station to be chaged up to a full 12 volts and they probably did not charge for that (nor even think it strange). Nobody (as far as I know) bothered to read an electricity bill (a habit I had copied as an adult until I discovered the original overcharge on my SP bills) because we all owned the company - every single one of us - and because an overcharge was instantly remedied if you found one. In fact, there was so much trust that one felt it would be perfectly acceptable to adjust the bill by lessening the next bill, and as far as I know people never queried the figures used to make the bill.

My memory is that it worked smoothly and silently. The whole structure was a very tempting target for the greedy, and it was split into various bits and sold to the highest bidders during Thatcher's time. That's where the present companies come from.

National Grid is now one of the many rapacious companies operating out there. You will know all the names, and they are probably all much the same. My supply was coming via National Grid and charged for by Scottish Power. Probably most of what I used was supplied by those customers up the road who had solar panels via National Grid and Scottish Power.

You cannot call what we have now a monopoly, but it is a cartel, which amounts to the same thing.. A collection of privately owned companies with common interests all agreeing how to get money out of people for the services they supply. I do not personally believe they would all like to give best value. Probably National Grid is still a monopoly, carrying power from all members of the cartel.

A scam.

You may have come across a scam whereby a company sells you something but doesn't deliver it. Then if you complain they instantly apologise and give you your money back. Simple. Honest. Legal.

BUT if you don't complain they will just keep the money! (thank you friend Wong for pointing this out). Any energy supplier can do this, and they can always make 'estimates' to adjust their figures if you catch them.

So when you catch them overcharging (as it seems you inevitably must eventually) all they have to do is apologise and give you a tenner and they will appear to be within the law - and might actually be so if they pay you back fully. They can also delay for 6 years.

Either way they win, as a customer dispute is so valueable to them.

Fraud

I hope you will have understoo why I think there was fraud committed, but I m going to try to explain about my own particular fraud.

If you sell someone a service with two meters that have a different charge per unit on each meter and then surreptitiously charge them the upper of the two rates for both meters for years on end you have already committed fraud. And if you persaude them to part with another £300 plus £500 per year thereafter to cover current bills - and then after two years it is noticed that they are only using £350 per year and you have not offered to reduce their bill and refuse to do so when the 'error' is noticed........

Then I think you have committed fraud. .

So I will not bother to tell you for the moment what the other more complicated frauds are about - if I can even manage to explain them at all...

There was fraud.


Solar power

I believe I have already told you why I think SP are so determined to stop individuals installing their own solar power, and the idea probably applies to every electricity company.

It is super easy to install solar and almost anyone with a basic understanding of electricity (I learnt enough as an 8 years old) can do, And the feeling of elation you feel when it actually works is wonderful. Probably quite liberating if nobody is trying to obstruct you.

I think what they would like to be able to do is charge people for the electricity they are generating for themselves. That is probably why they try to herd you into using one of those many companies that tell you how marvellous you are being if you pay them £6000 to install panels and they set up an account for you with one of the electricty companies.

You still won't own the panels even at that price!

I don't know who owns those installation companies but I should think they must be owned by the power companies who will reduce your yearly bill by a small amount so that the power company can make a profit selling your electricity to somebody else. They are barely even giving you a commision. It is quite easy for some people to calculate how much you are getting for your valueable commodity, for which the power comany are giving you so much less. All the power companies really need to do is sit on their !!!!!! and watch the money roll in. Ask someone.

History (not of electricity).

History has shown us that the civilised modern world from a moral and practical point of view came not from Margaret Thatcher at all (she will probably be nothing in history) but from the Greeks and later the Roman empires.

The Roman empire that started about year 0 on the christian calendar passed us so many benefits in our present age that I cannot list them. If I tell you that the reason we have a great many straight roads, and that the Romans had things like central heating, public baths and invented most of the modern process of law and justice and government that will be enough. Read all about it. It's fascinating. I was not there at the time despite how I may look, but numerous books old and new have told. me. You need to read deeply and thoroughly to appreciate them - and through the eyes of a person searching for a better world. (Some idiots on this forum will inevitably make some silly comments about all this, but I have a life to live so they probably won't even get a word of response out of me).

I am not particularly a Christian but my behaviour in this world tries to match those of Roman Christianity regardless of my religion (or lack thereof.) It is died in our minds down the generations. We just do it, and a lot of it still works really well and is highly practical.

All the ideas expressed by these empires were almost entirely about equality of chance, not sponging off people, proper law, proper law courts, fair government, love and tolerance amongst peoples (incidentally one Roman emperor was a black man and we could this very day learn something useful about that), proper policing, coinage with solid value - and we have lost most of it to a few greedy individuals. There are immensely rich people in this world and it makes no diffierence whatever to the rest of us.

After a few hundred years the empire deteriorated into government employees helping themselves whist not considering others (putting their fingers in the till!), and......and....and.. The empire ended, and as it had become so corrupt it may have been a good thing..

I don't remember what came next, but it must necessarily have had some similarities because we are still using the remnants and templates.

We're nearly at the point of collapse now with our current version of Roman society.. What the hell are we doing?

House_Martin

Utter rubbish about the two rate meter being fraud if its calculated wrongly.Its the occupiers job to inform the supplier of a faulty meter , or any faults whatsoever not just Eco 7 .Its in the small print.
In my many years as a meter reader for Scottish Power, BG, EDF ( with Accuread, British Gas, and G4S and MDS ) I had a lot of experience with old analogue timer switches which control when each rate starts up..Hardly any of them were accurate.Power cuts over many years sent them to use an internal spring which kept them in time but eventually that would wind down and they would start to be out of time.
Only Scottish Power are now still interested if these old clocks are within 2 hours of correct time..None of the others are remotely interested because they are not liable if these clocks are accurate. Its up to the occupier to inform the supplier ..Just because the occupiers have no idea how they work it does nt make the supplier liable.They may not be able to access the meters for years..When these transposed meters are found most of the time the occupiers have been getting their electric cheaper so they never call the supplier and complain..Only actual night storage users lose out when they are transposed. Also the meter is nt owned by the supplier, its owned by the local DNO for your area, any problems with the meter is up to them to rectify.
The answer to the nationwide mess ups with Eco 7, and that includes the older digital meters with built in timer clocks, is Eco 7 smart meters which would be better than Radio teleswitch timers, which are accurate but stay in GMT all year..Eco 7 smart can switch to BST maintaining the exact time all year.
Personally I do not think that call centre staff , or anyone really , quite understand whats happening with these old electric meters..They are disappearing but there still many about,,Will be good for everyone because the biggest losers overall are the suppliers IMO

Former_MSE_Andrea

spcustomer wrote: »

Readers should read this with the knowledge that Scottish Power are allowed by MSE to edit posts mentioning them.

Hi spcustomer

Someone reported this comment to us.

To be clear, other than our volunteer Board Guides, no forum members can edit posts made by other forum members. Forum members can edit their own posts.

Could you pop me a PM with the link to where you heard this so I can post there too?

Feel free to post it here too but a PM would get my attention quicker.

Thank you!

Andrea