Beware of unnecessary payment hikes - Scottish Power

Mackem45

Once again, NADA666 appears to be demonstating an affiliation with a utility company, abusing anyone who questions their operations. Has he/she declared this interest? Perhaps the site moderators should look into this.

DragonQ

scottishpower_company_representative wrote: »

Thank you for the various comments and I am sorry that we haven’t given as full an answer as you would have liked.

Principally, the Direct Debit is a method of payment for energy charges. So for example if one of our capped packages is due to finish on 30/06/13 and a Direct Debit is due on 7th of each month and this is cancelled after the payment made on 07/06/13, then we would apply cancellation charges or revert to an standard tariff. (The action taken depends on the particular tariff). The rationale for this is that the payment method is supposed to remain in place until the end of the package, (that is part of the agreement that the customer makes with us when they go on to their chosen package). In effect the period between 07/06/13 and 30/06/13 has yet to be billed. It is immaterial if the customer is in credit or debit as the account has not been billed for that period. So the payments have NOT been made according to the agreement.

Hmmm sorry but that sounds like a load of rubbish. You can't expect someone to cancel a particular tariff or agreement on the exact date that a direct debit is taken - this isn't the case for any other product. The direct debit doesn't even get cancelled so how can you say that the payment method has changed or stopped?

When I moved into my current home, I moved onto a direct debit tariff for about 5 weeks. Only one direct debit was taken and when I got the final bill, there was no change in tariff just because I left on a date that was after my final direct debit payment.

colinm

I gave up on this a long time ago, but I recently found out that you can switch suppliers within 42-49 days of a contract ending without being charged termination fees - from the CAB website:

"If you’re on a fixed term contract, you’ll be given 42-49 days before your fixed term contract ends to decide if you want to stay with your supplier or switch. You’ll get details of the rates you’ll move onto if you stay with the same supplier and don’t agree to a different tariff.

You’ll be able to switch without having to pay any termination fees and you can’t be rolled forward onto another fixed term contract without your consent."

Is this a new law or has it always been the case?

Thanks