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

spcustomer

So the Scottish Power team of correspondents (see David's email below) did finally persuade me to give David my account number, and now they feel they can wash their hands of the whole business. They had to try humiliation, threats, patronisation and straightforward underhandedness to achieve it but they did it in the end! How clever. I think I may have been outnumbered.

Having been talked into giving him my account number I sent this email:

Hello. As requested. My account number is ********

Please advise me as to how many of those people writing on the forum are from Scottish Power apart from you, and please answer questions by email or direct online.

I will start another thread if necessary.

Yours


to which his response was:

Dear (spcustomer)

Thank you for your e-mail. The number of team members responding on the forum varies.

I attach a copy of our letter dated 03 January 2013 confirming that we have reached a state of 'deadlock' in relation to your complaint. I therefore suggest that you contact the Energy Ombudsman to take your complaint further.

We will continue to request full payment unless you agree to a formal repayment arrangement.

Yours sincerely


David Simpson
Senior Complaints Advisor
Social Media Team
ScottishPower Customer Relations
Tel (external) 0141 568 6319 ext 3656

This email had an attachment from which I could not copy and paste of their letter of the 3rd January, no part of which gives an explanation of why they helped themselves so blatantly to £1000 from my bank account all those years ago.

Perhaps David will copy and paste it into an email for me so that I cane post it here.

But before we get to that, I should show you a letter I sent them last year:

Lynda Clayton, customer service director
ScottishPower
Cathcart Business Park
Spean Street
Glasgow
G44 4BE


21 November 2012


Dear Ms Clayton

Please be aware that I am intending to instruct my solicitor to issue an application to the Caernarfon County Court requesting an injunction requiring the following:

You stop from harrassing me further over alleged arrears, and instead -

You must either bring court action for recovery of arrears or permanently withdraw your claim for them (as requested by me in the past).

Must read my meters, or in the event of failure to gain access (which has never been denied) accept meter readings over a free telephone number.

Must keep proper accounts.

Must state clearly the percentages by which charges rise when they do and by which they fall when they do, on the paper account to which the new charges are applied

Must state clearly how charges have been derived from the meter readings, including which meter is economy rate and which non-economy rate.

Must compensate me for losses that have occurred due to the fact that I cannot get a quote from another supplier whilst arrears are alleged

Must clearly print Scottish Power's postal address on all documents demanding money

And probably some other matters.



Yours
(cont next post)

spcustomer

Continued.....

Someone called Gillian telephoned but luckily I was not in, and so I responded thus:


Gillian
c/o Lynda Clayton, customer service director
ScottishPower
Cathcart Business Park
Spean Street
Glasgow
G44 4BE


19 December 2012


Dear Gillian

Thank you for your call to my telephone yesterday regarding my letter of the 21st November.

As your company have now built so much mistrust I am not willing to telephone you. You should write so that I have evidence of what you have said.

I am unlikely to answer any mail before the new year.



Yours


They then sent me the letter I have asked David to provide a copyable version of, and I wrote back:
12 January 2013


Dear Ms. Johnstone

Thank you for your letter of the 3rd. January.

It is refreshing to see that some thought is being put into the matter, even if there is a certain intransigence in your approach.

Before we go any further I feel I ought to clarify a few things for you as you are writing as though you do not know of them:

1. I have asked your company at least twice to bring the matter to court so that we may decide what (if anything) is truly outstanding.

2. Your representative Linda (was this Lynda Clayton?) brought to me copies of various accounts that purported to show why your firm had pilfered £1000 from my bank account, but they do not succeed in showing anything. That pilfering is the source of the current dispute, and the reason why I deliberately built up arrears, the intention being to force your firm to bring action for recovery.

3. The time when this dispute started was a time when your firm's accounting department had within it some people who engaged in certain fraud in connection with their own electricity accounts. They were brought before the magistrates, and I am sure you will be able to find a record of this. There is every possibility that they did fraud with other people's accounts.

4. From time to time over the years I have written down my own meter readings (on random dates), and I rather doubt that they will in any way agree with your estimates. At present I do not know how an account is calculated from meter readings, but I am sure it would not be difficult to find out.



Yours


So - sorry, but until David helps I cannot give you a copy of that letter.

spcustomer

I have found amongst my docs a copy of the contents of my energy ombudsman complaint of 2005. It said this:

do not remember the complaint date.

I caught SP overcharging me some years ago but the problem is still with me. At the time they admitted to overcharging by £1300 and then sent me a cheque for £300 saying the rest was owing. They tried to account for this by saying that they had been underestimating for the last couple of years or so. I asked them to account for themselves by sending me copies of all back accounts for the past nine years and they told me that they would not do this unless I paid them for the accounts. I was not willing to pay for these as the whole matter was of their making

I stopped paying them until I had built up about £1000 alleged arrears and they started threatening me in various ways. They sent Linda Jones,, their local rep, to see me and put things right. During conversation with her she told me that typically a house like mine would have a bill of about £500 per annum, and so I asked her to look at some back bills and the three consecutive bills she looked at came to £850 or so. At this point she told me she had to be going.

I set up standing order for £500 pa to pay my electricity and they have been paid thus ever since, Linda's estimate was almost spot on, but they still keep threatening me,

A meter reading is sometimes followed up by a card asking me to give a meter reading. Last time a card came I tried to phone in the figures and the answering machine cut me off saying it did not recognise my account. The card only mentioned one meter when I have two

I should now point out that as the alleged arrears were £1000, at that time that sum represented more than two years' electricity. I continue to find it difficult to believe they could have made such a massive error in their own favour, and believe it is just an attmept at extortion.

On the 30th September a note arrived from SP telling me they intended to apply for a warrant of entry to install a prepayment meter.

I want them to stop harrassing me and compensate.

End of copy.


I cannot remember the energy ombudsman ever contacting me, and this may have been the result of Scottish Power providing me with a false email address or it may be some other reason

fishybusiness

Obviously a difficult situation for you, one thing strikes me

I continue to find it difficult to believe they could have made such a massive error in their own favour, and believe it is just an attmept at extortion.

Why would such a large organisation attempt extortion from you?

spcustomer

Thanks fishybusiness.

If they do it to enough people they could collect millions of pounds before anybody noticed. After all, the number of customers they have must run into millions, and even £1 per customer would be substantial money. They only need relatively few if they are overcharging by substantial amounts like they did with me.

I think the plan may have been like this:

Overcharge customer, and if they don't notice go on doing so. If they do notice immediately admit the overcharge but then do not make a full refund. That creates a 'dispute'. Don't resolve the dispute but pretend to be trying to do so. This makes a customer like me who deliberately goes into 'arrears' to make up their losses captive unless they are willing to accept the theft and pay the alleged arrears - because they cannot go to another supplier whilst they have alleged arrears. (However, I do get the impression that the electricity companies are anyway a cartel and that therefore one could expect the same or similar from another supplier. The number of complaints on this site suggest that this is the case).

Whatever the initial motivation, they have never given me a breakdown account to show how they came to the conclusion that they could just take themselves an extra two years' worth of charges (£1000 at the time) from my bank account.

t0rt0ise

So now it's at deadlock and you've taken it to the Energy Ombudsman, what happened?

spcustomer

Thank you Tortoise

I complained to the energy ombudsman in 2005 and the energy ombudsman did nothing.

What we all need is a class action.

It is not only Scottish Power who do this kind of thing. I know for certain of a matter involving British Gas doing something very similar. The difficulty is that the energy companies are a cartel and can do whatever they like whether it is ethical and honest or not - and unfortunately they use this fact to their own ends. At present they seem to have roughly the same ability to suck everybody dry as the aristocracy once had, and the only solution I can think of is that they should be nationalised again - as probably should the banks.

It is highly likely that those persons and organisations that jumped on the bandwagon when all these companies were floated (by splitting up our publicly-owned utilities into saleable chunks and flogging them off they offered us all the chance to buy that which we already owned!) would expect to be compensated for their shares if renationalisation did take place. It would be questionable whether that was moral or not. There might be one other possibility. A sensible government could buy so many shares in one or two utilities that they have control of them and then wipe the others out by competition (allegedly fair market and level playing-field!) and thus buy them up cheap as they go bankrupt - but it is doubtful that politicians could deal with all that. The power would probably go to their heads.

I have asked David from Scottish Power to copy and paste the letter I cannot copy into an email and send it to me so that I may paste it here. I don't know whether he will do that. I doubt it.

Scottish_Power

SP Customer I sent you a standard word document attached to the last e-mail There should be no problem copying and pasting from it. However for completeness I will send the text in the body of an e-mail. David

spcustomer

Thank you David.

When I tried to copy (mind you, I was doing it in Windows Vista) it would copy but not paste into any other program than that from which it copied.

Here is SP's letter copied from David's email:


Date
3 January 2012

Phone number
0141 568 6319

Dear (spcustomer)

I refer to the letter we have received on the 14 December 2012, regarding debt follow up on your electricity account.

Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience this matter has caused you.

As you are aware there has been previous correspondence regarding an outstanding balance on your account. It has been explained the debt was due to non payment on the account. You were advised in 2005 and 2008 that you would need to pay £110.00 per month to cover ongoing usage and clear the outstanding balance.

Unfortunately you refused to pay this amount and the outstanding balance has not been paid. This has now lead to debt follow up on your account and additional debt fees have been added to the account.

The outstanding balance up to 11/11/2011 was £1339.15. Between 12/11/2011 and 11/12/2012, you used £466.14 in electricity plus £244.86 debt fees, we received £591.14 in payments leaving an outstanding balance of £1459.01.

Before debt follow will stop, your account will have to be brought up to date or a payment plan put in place. If you would like to arrange this please contact me direct to discuss this.

Energy Efficiency Advice

You may benefit from energy efficiency advice. Our Energy Efficiency team is available during office hours on 0800 33 22 33. You might be interested to know that The Energy Savings Trust (Scotland) offers a free and impartial advice service on how to use your energy efficiently. They can be contacted on 0800 512 012. With regards to your ongoing usage you can call Warm Front (England and Wales) on freephone 0800 316 2805 to find out if you are eligible for a heating or insulation grant

You could save 10% on your annual bill by lowering the thermostat by just one degree. For more free tips, phone our Energy Efficiency Advice Line on 0800 33 22 33 or visit our website.

I am sorry that we have been unable to resolve this matter to your satisfaction more quickly. As we have now exhausted our internal complaints process and our offer on resolution was not accepted, this letter constitutes a deadlock situation. This means that you have a right to refer your complaint to the Energy Ombudsman.

The Energy Ombudsman is an independent body that has been set up to resolve sales, billing and transfer issues between customers and energy suppliers. This service is free to customers. Details of how to contact them can be found in the enclosed Ombudsman booklet or within the "Complaints" section on our website.

Remedies that the Ombudsman can award include an apology, an explanation, a requirement on the supplier to take remedial action or, in appropriate circumstances, a financial award. The Ombudsman's decision will be binding on us as your supplier, but you are free to choose whether or not to accept their decision.

Your complaint with us has now been closed and we await contact from the Energy Ombudsman should you choose to take your complaint to them.. Your balance of £1459.01 is due for immediate repayment, and normal debt recovery action will commence.


I trust that this clarifies our position. If I can be of any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact me directly on the number listed overleaf. I am generally available from 8.00am to 5.30pm, Monday to Thursday.

Yours sincerely


Gillian Johnstone
Customer Relations

In other words, you are wrong and you owe us money whatever the arguments.

Interesting, isn't it? At no point has anyone mentioned the original £1000 they owed me, and they have managed to turn that into an argument for charging me more! I do not know how many (if any) readers know what 'psychopath' means. It is a psychiatric condition worth studying, because it is one of the things that make our otherwise reasonably smooth lives difficult. One strong characteristic of psychopathy is that the psychopath, starting out as the aggressor, manages by some trickery to make themselves seem like the victim whilst still getting away with their original aggression.

Do we perhaps have corporate psychopathy going on here?

Nada666

Methinks there are one or two other terms SPcustomer may want to look up in the DSM.