Add your feedback on energy supplier Scottish Power

Gerry1

@Myname2012 Send a letter headed COMPLAINT by snail mail (get a free Certificate of Posting) then go to the Ombudsman upon receipt of a deadlock letter, or after eight weeks if they don't send one.

pearl123

Nil points! Woudn't return even if they paid me. 

hybernia

Gerry1 said:

@Myname2012 Send a letter headed COMPLAINT by snail mail (get a free Certificate of Posting) then go to the Ombudsman upon receipt of a deadlock letter, or after eight weeks if they don't send one.

Unfortunately, an untraceable letter such as that which you're proposing is of no help to anyone.

Scottish Power, with its track record of sustained and deliberate lying, will simply say it never received any complaint about anything.

If a formal letter of complaint is to be issued and sent to the company's postal address in Edinburgh,it should be sent by Next Day Royal Mail Special Delivery because Royal Mail insists that a Special Delivery acknowledgment form has to be signed by the recipient..

The cost will be around £5 but in comparison to the amount of money at stake in this particular case, it's small change. A Post Office receipt for the amount spent should be kept safe, ready to be copied and sent off to the Ombudsman as an expense incurred which Scottish Power must reimburse. I(SE will certainly do so, under duress and after the Ombudsman has told 'em they must.)

Remember: any dealings with Scottish Power that are undocumented -- i.e., an unrecorded telephone conversation -- and any formal written correspondence by snail mail that isn't sent Next Day Special Delivery will be ignored by Scottish Power and the very existence of same, strenuously denied.

Scottish Power is an expert at denials of fact and inventions of fiction .

Given that this disgusting outfit's conduct has been known about for years and years, it continues to amaze me that nowadays we still hear of customers complaining about having spent hours chasing up Scottish Power on the telephone (ye gods, why? Communication with Customer Support should only ever be undertaken via email) and now, today,  there's this flawed advice about sending off crucial letters without the kind of proof of delivery that a civil Court would recognise.

A Certificate of Posting is merely proof of posting.

It is NOT proof of delivery.

Scottish Power can, and would, gleefully deny the existence of any complaint for which the sender had only a meaningless bit of paper such as that (viz: "Ah, well yes. We can see you posted a letter. But, but. . . we never actually received it! Must've got lost in the post en route to us, sorry and all that').

What it cannot deny is the signature of one of its employees on a Royal Mail Special Delivery acknowledgment form.

[Deleted User]

I sent my Formal Letter of Complaint via the Contactus email.  Got an automatic receipt for this email on 6th April and the complaint (non-payment of YE credit) was attended to by the 10th April with a new final bill with the refund itemised.  Credit was paid by DD on 15th April.  Complaint was marked as closed as they had resolved it.  So the email route worked in my case.    

Gerry1

@hybernia I'm not a lawyer, but I understood that a first class letter was deemed to have been received on the second day after it was posted, left with, delivered to or collected by the relevant service provider provided that day is a business day; or if not, the next business day after that day.

https://www.franciswilksandjones.co.uk/site/our_services/debt_claims/county-court/further-information-cc/what-is-the-deemed-date-of-service-cc.html

http://www.aboutsmallclaims.co.uk/serving-court-papers-documents.html

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1998/3132/article/6.7/made

MovingForwards

All my complaints have been emailed in to Scottish Power, including the one to the CEO.

Cygnus_X1

I've posted separately about SP's refusal to implement an Energy Ombudsman ruling in my favour.
Desperate to leave them but now being held hostage by them. Wouldn't touch them with a bargepole given the chance.

wells212

Scottish Power, very very poor.
Switched automatically to them when my previous supplier went bust.
Tried to get a smart meter. 1st apppointment cancelled for sickness, second installer arrived but did not have a ladder he could use in a hallway...........in East London, after 4 check phone calls from SP none of which asked me about a hallway.
Reported this and SP then evidently forgot me.
Rang again to book, Dan from Birmingham cut me off.
Rang again, service rep with the telly on and children in background spoke so fast I could not hear her name. stated installer had not informed them so could not rebook.
Rang installation company stated they had told SP, which I suspected.
Rang SP again, lady stated could not install at present because the satellite was in the wrong place.
Switched provider to Green

Catscradle

I was switched to Scottish Power from Yorkshire Energy after they went bust. They took ages to set up my account and when they did, did not accept my 4-figure gas meter reading but instead recorded an estimated reading with 5 figures. After several phone calls and a string of correspondence, a customer service advisor told me that I must now continue giving 5-figure readings, adding a 1 at the start of the actual reading, as otherwise their system would not accept my readings. I did query this, and she said she had checked and the advice was definitely correct .

This worked OK until a meter reader came round and told me the advice I had been given was incorrect and he had to give a 4-figure reading. Since then I have wasted literally hours phoning them up, only to be told a different story each time. I have been repeatedly told my account is in the process of being corrected.

I now want to move to someone else due to their time wasting and incompetence, but am not sure if this will be possible while their system is still showing a 5-figure reading for a 4-figure meter. Does anyone know the answer? Many thanks.

MovingForwards

@Catscradle lodge a complaint via email, explain in bullet point format what the problems are, all the advice you were provided by their advisors, the meter reader comments, say you've called X amount of times etc and tell them you want it resolved within x amount of weeks as you're unable to move to another supplier and it's costing you etc. Do not let them fob you off or close the complaint.

There will be dreadful email exchanges as their handlers don't understand. Then after a few where you're repeating yourself and telling them to read your email properly, email the CEO (their email address is available via an internet search.

Forward the emails to the CEO, again setting everything out, telling them you want it resolved within x weeks or you're going to the ombudsman. That will escalate your complaint to a slightly better complaints handler.

See if they resolve it within whatever timeframe (8 weeks I think from when you originally emailed to complain, but it's on their website), then just forward the lot to the ombudsman. If they start to resolve it then you can hang on it you want or just escalate to the ombudsman.

Whatever you do, isn't a quick process, but you have to lodge the complaint and wait X weeks before escalating it to the ombudsman.