Add your feedback on energy supplier Scottish Power

amberz

Do SP charge extra if it has been an estimated meter reading? I have asked, searched and all I find is why it could be estimated i.e.not getting to them in time for bill going out.
Just wondered...

victor2

amberz wrote: »

Do SP charge extra if it has been an estimated meter reading? I have asked, searched and all I find is why it could be estimated i.e.not getting to them in time for bill going out.
Just wondered...

Haven't heard of anybody who does, so I would say no.
Of course, if the estimate is higher than the actual, you will get billed more for the period covered, and less if lower. It all gets sorted out when an actual reading is taken. Low estimates are often the trigger for complaints of "huge" bills you see on here...

2010

I have noticed with SP that as soon as you enter your meter readings online they immediately produce an up to date bill.

Janine_chambers

Switched in march, went smoothly, but tried to change my direct debit details and has been a disaster from start to finish. Scottish Power don't seem to be able to manage a change of direct debit details and have sent me emails saying I haven't paid my bill despite the direct debit been set up on my New account. Two phone calls later and they still can't take the payment until 27th of June The direct debit was set up yesterday 15th of May and they cannot take one out for 27th of May can't understand it myself. Wish I had of stayed with my previous supplier. The saving is notWorth the hassle.

hybernia

Janine_chambers wrote: »

Switched in march, went smoothly, but tried to change my direct debit details and has been a disaster from start to finish. Scottish Power don't seem to be able to manage a change of direct debit details and have sent me emails saying I haven't paid my bill despite the direct debit been set up on my New account. Two phone calls later and they still can't take the payment until 27th of June The direct debit was set up yesterday 15th of May and they cannot take one out for 27th of May can't understand it myself. Wish I had of stayed with my previous supplier. The saving is notWorth the hassle.

DDs can take a few days to be fully operational, depending upon how efficient a bank happens to be. Setting up a DD on the 15th of the month for it to become effective 12 days later is, however, more than sufficient time.

Sadly, your experience is but one more of the countless many examples of Spanish Power being perfectly capable of managing matters financial to its own advantage, but when it comes to a customer's finances? No chance. On this occasion, as on others, it will likely claim that the problem is all down to an IT systems upgrade which actually occurred several years ago but is a really useful excuse to keep trotting out, especially to the Regulator.

Just make sure when you leave that you take a final meter reading(s) and, ideally, photograph them. You are, after all, dealing with what Which? described as the worst major company in Britain for customer treatment / customer service.

PhilBB

I’m prompted to give my feedback on SP by my most recent experience.

I have been with SP since April 2011. I think that move from standard suppliers (SSE/BG) went fine.

I have considered moving a number of times but they end up being the cheapest tariff at renewal apart from the odd obscure supplier with unknown performance.

There have been some hiccups along the way and my observation is that the more they were criticised and tried to improve the worse things have got.

Telephone support is mixed, particularly in the past when it was near impossible to get through. Online support has always been a waste of time; their personnel can’t respond correctly to anything other than the simplest of requests and basically anything that one should be able to do yourself online.

Their direct debit calculation does not take account of when the DD is taken so just before DD date vs just after will give quite different results. In the beginning my DD used to yoyo but if you rang up and could get through they’d just change it. Then I discovered the DD manager (or did they introduce it with the new IT system?). I record my meter readings monthly and do my own graphs and calculations in excel. I can then calculate what my DD should be and use the DD manager to set that. This sounds onerous but I have built up from something simple over the years. The DD manager graph is quite a good way of setting it if you don’t want to do your own calculations, but I wish I had entered monthly readings over the years as this would have given them better data to work on; I only provide readings when asked.

I once changed my DD quite close to the date and rather than it just change a month later they missed a DD so I made a manual payment to correct it.

I have stuck with them on the basis that I found I could do everything online, change tariff and set my own DD.

My latest experience -
Most of the time I have changed tariff mid term if I found they had a cheaper tariff. This year my tariff expired. As the new cheapest tariff was more I agonised about when to select, thinking I would be shifted immediately. Then I noticed that the available tariffs were rising. I had analysed and chosen tariff Online Fixed Price Energy April 2018 but by the time I made the decision this had changed to a v2 version of this tariff with increased cost. I selected it online but nothing shows this in your account you just get a confirmation email and you keep getting emails about your tariff expiring and the online account also shows your tariff expiring. The switch confirmation email said the new tariff might take up to a week from the switch date to show in the online account. As far as I am concerned it ought to be shown as pending in the online account and it shouldn’t take more than a day or two at most (allowing for their systems to process a large no of changes on a tariff expiry date). It’s just a matter of programming. The tariff change date came and went. After 10 days it was still showing my old tariff. I contacted online support to be told to select a new tariff. Of course by then the tariff I had chosen had gone to be replaced by more expensive choices. I rang telephone support who gave me an email address to forward my tariff change confirmation email to and it would be changed manually. How come they couldn’t see the pending tariff change and action it? I duly did this and they changed me to the wrong tariff! That’s the trouble with so many tariffs with similar names. Another email to them got it changed to the correct one. I then changed the DD to allow for the increase in tariff. In the account overview my DD shows as £0.00 but if I go into the DD manager it shows what I have set. I will see if they take the next DD correctly. Whilst doing my calculation for new DD I spotted that the v2 tariff had dual fuel discount but not online discount. The v1 version I had first considered did have both discounts. More recent Online Fixed Price Energy tariffs currently on offer have both discounts. Looks like someone made a mistake with the Online Fixed Price Energy April 2018 v2 tariff and accidentally missed off the online discount. I queried this via online support and got a useless response – ignoring the fact their response had mistakes, the jist was all they told me was what I told them. I suppose the cynic in me says why would they admit a mistake which was in their favour; however I doubt the representative even thought that far. After all, the tariff price sheet was there for me to read when I signed up.

During all of this I had seen the moneysaving expert cheap energy club offering and wished I had left SP. I have stayed with SP for so long as they were cheap and as long as I could manage online okay I avoid the possibility of adding to the horror stores you read of in forums of when people leave. I’m half tempted to leave and swallow the £60 cancellation fee to be free of them but think it might be messier than leaving at end of tariff.

In summary, prices are generally almost the cheapest. Support is poor, particularly the overseas online support. If you can do it all online and it works which it does 95% of the time then all is fine. My bills have always been correct.

I am very apprehensive about when I leave!

hybernia

Interesting read, Phil, and many thanks for providing it.

Our family has, like many another, had numerous bad experiences with numerous UK energy providers, going all the way back to that unnecessary privatisation.

About the worst we ever dealt with was British Gas, a clear front-runner in the field for lying, for incompetence, for indifference and for profit-seeking at any cost. There was no Energy Ombudsman service back then, though its predecessor was of similar calibre, i.e.: as useful as a chocolate fireguard.

Fast forward more than a decade and we're very happy, very contented, British Gas customers. Why? Because BG overhauled its customer relations from top to bottom a couple of years back and now provides an energy account online management service that, in our considerable experience, is the absolute best.

We always input out meter readings the day after the monthly DD is taken. BG's onscreen facility shows us the date and totals of the last readings; the amount spent / energy amount consumed since then; and instantly updates that on-screen information once we've entered our readings. BG then follows this up -- immediately -- with an email saying 'thanks for the information; your next bill isn't due yet but this information really helps us in making sure everything's accurate' (words to that effect.)

Overhauling a system -- and an energy supplier -- as bad as British Gas used to be has been costly, but BG bit the bullet so all kudos to it.

By contrast: Spanish Power hasn't the slightest interest in improving itself or modifying its behaviour or doing anything other than raking in as much money as it can get. Never mind the consequences to the customer: they can always be fobbed off with Ombudsman-backed £30 'goodwill payments' as well as stories of how SP is "working hard to correct IT difficulties arising from the installation of new systems". And if image-making looks like being a problem, well, SP can always take out half page ads in national broadsheet newspapers in which it congratulates itself in helping cancer patients with its charitable donations.

It's doubtful there's an uglier or more repellent company operating in the UK than Spanish Power. Why the UK regulator continues to allow it to operate is not so much a mystery as testimony to its supine toothlessness.

lemony_7

SCOTTISH POWER

Did you switch go smoothly?
Yes, very smoothly

Have you had problems since?
So many problems! Once we had switched I changed our direct debit date via Twitter support (for ease). The DD came out on the wrong date putting us into our overdraft. I called them and they changed it, but couldn't refund our money. During the month I checked my account and the date was still wrong so I changed it myself.

Next month the DD came out on the wrong date AGAIN, putting us into our overdraft. I called AGAIN to change it, but they also changed the amount to double! I am still fighting this, but it has been nothing but hassle. I have put in two formal complaints so far and we have been with them two months!

Is it easy to contact?
Yes.

than

I've had nothing short of abysmal customer service from Scottish Power and cannot recommend enough to try ANY other supplier before going near them. I understand everyone has a different experience, but for me, sadly despite whatever prices they may offer (I'm not sure if they are good or bad) customer service for me is key and their complete disregard for me and so many others, from reading these threads, means I cannot give them any more than 0 out of 10.

Rosrj1

we entered our online meter readings on 28th May and we were £1 in credit, paid our DD on 29th May which mad us £110 in credit .. it is our review so we asked for the refund and they told us we are not in credit. I have discovered that my account updates instantly when meter readings and payments are made but apparently scottish power take 5 working days to update your DD payment .. they have no explanation for why this is and are not concerned that this causes confusion for customers.