Beware of unnecessary payment hikes - Scottish Power

gareth77uk

I have had a letter through my door demanding I pay £1263 pounds, I checked my last bill May 1st were it stated I was £292 in debt, since Then i have paid £165 off this account and I pointed out to them for the month of May I will be unemployed, I started work on June 1st as such another payment would be made at the end of June, how could I have used £1000 pounds worth of units? Are Scottish power actually demanding money for the future? this is disgusting!! When I rang them they said the only way they could put a hold on the account was for my myself to set up a direct debit of £292 monthly.. something seems very wrong here to me... have they been doing this sort of thing to most people!.. I want to leave them asap, the have also replied to my emails stating someone elses account.

Edit: the other thing was online they deleted all meter readings!!

DirectDebacle

DirectDebacle wrote: »

Will a customer be put on a standard tariff if the payment method is cancelled after the last payment due is made but before the end date of the package? If so please give the reasons.

SP Rep. Do you have an answer for this query please?

Thanks.

colinm

Hi,

I'm in a bit of a pickle with this SP to EDF switch.

I was on the electricity fixed price July 2013 with SP, so decided to switch to EDF 3 weeks ago.

Typically, the switch completed much more quickly than I expected, completing 3 days ago, which now means I have to pay SP the £30 cancellation fee.

Is there anything I can do? Is there any onus on EDF to check the tariff contract before switching over?

Thanks

DirectDebacle

SP are entitled to charge the cancellation fee as your switch occurred before the end of the contract. EDF are under no obligation to check your contract with SP.

What you must do is check your final bill very carefully from SP when you receive it. In addition to the cancellation charge they will have also placed you on their standard tariff. Check when they did this and how much energy has been charged at the standard tariff. There should only be 3 days at this rate (or from the date EDF began to supply you).

SP are putting some customers on the standard tariff as soon as they receive notification that a switch has been applied for. This will further inflate the bill and is a breach of their own T&C's.

If this has happened to you it will be grounds for complaint, a refund of the difference between your fixed price and the standard tariff price and may give you some room to negotiate a reduction or removal of the cancellation fee.

colinm

Damn, that's what I thought - thanks for the heads up about the tariff change - will keep any eye on that.

Still works out cheaper to pay the £30 than stay with SP, but very annoying nonetheless. I should have waited another week or two before switching

eschaton

I started the same switch as yourself on 6/6/13 and my electricity moves on 3/7/13 with the gas 7 days later. I think electricity was originally supposed to move on the 2nd.

Luckily, I had no need to worry about the switch date as SP had agreed to waive any cancellation charges if the switch happened before 30th June in recognition for providing very poor customer service.

The begging me to stay letter I got off them last week made me smile

SP told me not to cancel my DD so I did this on Friday so they don't raid my account tomorrow.

After over 5 years of never missing submitting readings to SP on the 1st, I will give them an extra reading today to help them keep my final bill accurate

eschaton

colinm wrote: »

Hi,

I'm in a bit of a pickle with this SP to EDF switch.

I was on the electricity fixed price July 2013 with SP, so decided to switch to EDF 3 weeks ago.

Typically, the switch completed much more quickly than I expected, completing 3 days ago, which now means I have to pay SP the £30 cancellation fee.

Is there anything I can do? Is there any onus on EDF to check the tariff contract before switching over?

Thanks

To be fair to EDF, if you have registered your account online, you should have known the expected switch date well in advance and could have contacted them to see if it was possible to delay.

And congratulations on leaving SP Early experience of customer service from EDF is mies ahead of SP.

Did you switch to EDF through MSE? £30 cashback for doing so on dual fuel, I think single fuel was £15 which will help towards the cancellation fee.

eschaton

DirectDebacle wrote: »

SP Rep. Do you have an answer for this query please?

Thanks.

Has the rep disappeared again or playing at hard to get?

DirectDebacle

eschaton wrote: »

Has the rep disappeared again or playing at hard to get?

Probably in ostrich mode. Will give a gentle nudge tomorrow.

DirectDebacle

Any SP rep care to respond to the points raised in posts #58,79 & 83?

No reponses from any SP rep since 19/6/2013 to a simple question.