Add your feedback on energy supplier SSE

RandomQ

I had a dispute about faulty equipment with SSE, I found them to terrible on customer service, first they denied there was a problem, they refused to put in a clone meter despite the historical figures for 8 years showing massively abnormal usage.

They escalated my complaint to some bod who just quoted some corporate party line.

They had had over £2800 from me so I refused to pay anymore until they carried out a proper investigation.

Eventually they agreed to install a clone meter, the Engineer did not turn up 3 times then on 4th time he came in and replaced the meter rather than installing the clone meter (taking the old meter with him and destroying the evidence).

Still the issue remained, the only thing I could do was turn off all power except for lighting and record usage.

Then we discovered what the problem was, it was the device that does the Eco7, it was setting the power to day rate and putting the storage heating on 24/7, so that was 18 hours extra a day.

I then found out that there is a simple way to check that Eco7 is working by passing a stick over a wire and that SSE actually had their meter readers using it; so if they had done their job properly they could have detected the fault, but why would they when they get a customer’s money.

So we had established that their kit was faulty, we established from the figures when it must have gone wrong, but still they came up with some math formula that minimised their exposure.

I had another supplier years earlier who had been reading my Gas and Elec wrong (transposed) on a 4 bed house, when they screwed up they refunded me and paid me £200 for the inconvenience of having paid and trusted them.

BUT not SSE, I disputed their algorithm, I went to two consumer organisations and they told me how to calculate the correct usage based on previous readings, they suggested that I ask SSE to monitor for 3 to 6 months and then charge me according to my actual usage after kit had been fixed.

SSE said they would do it for 12 months and then let me know, meanwhile they carried on with all the debt chasing letters which they said reset every 28 days, thus screwing up my credit record for THEIR failure. They said it was my responsibility to call them every 28 days to make sure it was set back to account in review, even though they had agreed to wait and see what my usage was going forward.

The first quarter came and was back to normal, but they refused to credit me pro rata for that quarter for the 2 years, they insisted on waiting, next quarter came, again my usage was similar to readings pre the fault, but again they refused to credit me pro rata for the quarters of what was now half a year, another two quarters passed and they STILL would not credit me using the new readings. So they went back on their word.

At this point they pulled out yet another algorithm for calculating the credit, the CAB told me to take it to the Ombudsman.

They then passed my case to no less than three different managers with some stupid job title, each of them held by some party line and then disappeared. I would chase them, they would say they could not agree the stalemate until a manager approved it and so it went on.

The logic made no sense, they were going to have to pay over £300 to go to the Ombudsman, but they would not even offer me that as a halfway point between what they wanted and what I wanted, I think we were about £600 apart, not including the £300.

Still they would not do the formal stalemate letter required for me to pass to Ombudsman, they insisted on passing it to yet another manager.

At this point I had to leave the property as the Landlord was selling up, I asked them to come to a decision before I left or I would not be paying anything at all, bizarrely this seemed to make them even less keen to deal with the matter.
Their whole demeanour was awful from start to finish.

In the end I left the property and I did not pay, I called them for a further 2 months and still they refused to give me the stalemate letter, so I told them I was done.

I will not pay them no matter what; I have been told that it will eventually go off statute.

That is my experience of SSE, not a company I would recommend to anyone.


All companies screw up from time to time, what matters is how they deal with it when they do.

Chomerly

This is not a complaint, but more of an issue I ran into when trying to get a quote from SSE for gas only on a prepayment meter. Basically there is no option for a prepayment on their website, even though The Cheap Energy Club gave me comparisons for prepayment meters. Just an option for monthly or quarterly direct debits.

notional

SSE just gets worse and worse.  They email you asking for a meter reading to be entered on the website then ignore it when generating the bill.  I complained about this once and they said and here I quote "YOU GAVE THE READING TOO EARLY".  Ie the day they emailed me.  They said you should wait a couple of days after the email        

They hassled me for months to agree to a smart meter, then when I did, they couldn't offer an appoinment for months.  The day of the appointment, they didn't turn up.  I then rebooked an appointment, which they could not offer for months, once again. In total it took A YEAR. When they did fit the meters, the gas one didn't communicate with the electric one, but they took the functionality off the website to enter the gas meter readings manually, I had to make a complaint to get it put back.  They suggested the solution was to 'phone in the reading', ie listen to mind blowingly annoying music for half an hour at my expense.  Is that a viable suggestion for everyone whose meters don't communicate?  They were taken over by OVO who give out a smart relay device to solve this problem, but SSE as the poor relation don't.

Twice I have got into protracted Kafkaesque long running complaints with them. 

They are a total and utter pain in the !!!!!!.

Fyne

Despite giving them 3 meter readings in a 4 week period when my bill was due, they completely ignored the one for the THTC meter and have billed me on a ridiculous estimate. So my account shows I owe over £700. However, they do not seem to be increasing my DD as that part of the bill is blank, so I'll wait and see what happens as I have sent another scanned reading yesterday.

lisajane1967pink

New build not on National data base trouble getting an energy supplier 

Gerry1

lisajane1967pink said:

New build not on National data base trouble getting an energy supplier 

Have you chased up the developer?

Shedman

I notice that Notional describes dealing with SSE as being "Kafkaesque".  That's exactly how I felt about them regarding the experience we had with them when my stepdaughter moved into a new flat with SSE as suppliers. Generally very poor customer service, completely wrong and/or conflicting information and just general incompetence and unhelpfulness (apart from a couple of notable exceptions).

The only upside with having to deal with them was that they gave her an amount of credit as compensation on her final bill for the hassle so that it actually meant that for 4 weeks she was on supply with them they ended up paying her rather than the other way around 

Reckon they must be the poorest electricity company I've ever had to deal with and, given that includes Together Energy, that's saying something.