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Scottish Power - when paying for your energy used isn't enough!
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I have just had the mother of all rows with Scottish Power and lost my temper big style, in fact I can't remember when I was last as angry:mad:
I pay £97.65 a month by DD, when I moved to SP last October this was the figure set based on my previous 12 months use. As I check my usage and calculate the cost of my energy using my own spreadsheet, I know that year on year my usage is pretty much the same and I was happy with what they wanted.
In January, they reviewed my account and left things alone. Then in April they tried to slam me with an increase up to £125. They based this on estimated usage that was over 3000 units more than we had ever used before. I expected a fight, got one and in the end got my payments set back to £97.65 - common sense prevailed!
I have just put my new readings in and immediately it came back and said they had decided to up my payments to £120 a month. So after checking against my figures I was on the phone to them.
I tried to keep it simple as follows;
Over the course of the year your payments should equal the cost of the energy you have used.
I joined on 16 October 2012 so by 16 October 2013 I should not owe them and they should not owe me. If this is the case the payments I have made each month are correct............
Currently at 15 July I owe them £88.26
On 20 July my DD goes out for £97.65, so I am pretty much on an even keel.
Based on last years usage for 15 July to 16 October I will use £181.00 worth of electric.
So £88.26 + £181 = £269.26 to pay.
I have 3 x £97.65 due to go out = £292.95
Therefore by 16 October my 1 year anniversary, I will be £23.69 in credit, which means I have a £23.69 buffer for the period from now until October 16.
On 20 October my next payment will go out resulting in me being £121.34 in credit, less the extra 4 days electric I will have used.
All in all the payment plan at £97.65 is correct and will have covered me.
Well apparently not according to Scottish Power whose Customer Service Specialist has just informed me of some gems of wisdom as follows;
If I use £1000 worth of electric in a year and pay £1000, that means I have not paid enough and should pay more.
I have to pay the amount Scottish Power tell me to as it is up to them how much my direct debit needs to be.
My calculations and figures are wrong, theirs are right and I don't know what I am talking about!
I can not cancel my direct debit and pay by other means.
I owe them money and am in debt because I haven't paid enough and when my next payment goes out at the end of this week, I will still be in debt because I haven't paid enough.
So after listening to these pearls of wisdom and being 100% correct in the knowledge that my figures are accurate, I said;
Okay so if I pay £120 then come 16 October SP will owe me around £83.69 and 4 days later a further payment of £120 would be taken meaning after 1 year and 4 days with SP they would owe me £203.69!
Well apparently that is allowed and can be offset against future use:rotfl:
At this point I explodeded and advised him I was not listening to this BS any longer and demanded the DD was set back to £97.65, as it is my money, not theirs and I will choose what, when and how I pay. Not surprisingly he refused, so I demanded to speak to a manager, he said I couldn't........ Wrong answer, so he got both barrels again.:mad:
Eventually he decided to raise it as a complaint and advised me I would receive a callback as Customer care were too busy to speak to me. That callback would be in the next 5 working days............
I blew my top again, told him what a garbage service time that was and told him to note on my account that unless a call was received today, I would cancel my DD as soon as this months payment had gone through and pay manually each month thereafter. He tried to tell me that I couldn't do that, so he got the sharp end of my tongue yet again.
I immediately went online and saw he had raised the complaint, took the details and found a direct number to Customer Care. I rang up and within 30 seconds my DD was reduced back to £97.65 because the guy could see exactly the point I had made and that come October I will be level. The amount paid will equal the amount used over the year.
I also advised him that if my calculations prove to be wrong (they won't) I pay any shortfall in full in October. I think that is more than fair enough.
These energy companies think that they are a law unto themselves and can ride roughshod over people without a care in the world, making their obscene amounts of profit every year and still hiking proces up all the time.
Well not this one they don't:D The most galling thing though is there are probably hundreds of thousands of people out there, that are getting treated like this and don't know how to work it out themselves. So just accept these payment hikes and go without other things, even food because they are on limited incomes.
The whole set up needs investigating and someone needs to come down on these companies really hard and stop them screwing people like they do.
Rant Over!!!!
I pay £97.65 a month by DD, when I moved to SP last October this was the figure set based on my previous 12 months use. As I check my usage and calculate the cost of my energy using my own spreadsheet, I know that year on year my usage is pretty much the same and I was happy with what they wanted.
In January, they reviewed my account and left things alone. Then in April they tried to slam me with an increase up to £125. They based this on estimated usage that was over 3000 units more than we had ever used before. I expected a fight, got one and in the end got my payments set back to £97.65 - common sense prevailed!
I have just put my new readings in and immediately it came back and said they had decided to up my payments to £120 a month. So after checking against my figures I was on the phone to them.
I tried to keep it simple as follows;
Over the course of the year your payments should equal the cost of the energy you have used.
I joined on 16 October 2012 so by 16 October 2013 I should not owe them and they should not owe me. If this is the case the payments I have made each month are correct............
Currently at 15 July I owe them £88.26
On 20 July my DD goes out for £97.65, so I am pretty much on an even keel.
Based on last years usage for 15 July to 16 October I will use £181.00 worth of electric.
So £88.26 + £181 = £269.26 to pay.
I have 3 x £97.65 due to go out = £292.95
Therefore by 16 October my 1 year anniversary, I will be £23.69 in credit, which means I have a £23.69 buffer for the period from now until October 16.
On 20 October my next payment will go out resulting in me being £121.34 in credit, less the extra 4 days electric I will have used.
All in all the payment plan at £97.65 is correct and will have covered me.
Well apparently not according to Scottish Power whose Customer Service Specialist has just informed me of some gems of wisdom as follows;
If I use £1000 worth of electric in a year and pay £1000, that means I have not paid enough and should pay more.
I have to pay the amount Scottish Power tell me to as it is up to them how much my direct debit needs to be.
My calculations and figures are wrong, theirs are right and I don't know what I am talking about!
I can not cancel my direct debit and pay by other means.
I owe them money and am in debt because I haven't paid enough and when my next payment goes out at the end of this week, I will still be in debt because I haven't paid enough.
So after listening to these pearls of wisdom and being 100% correct in the knowledge that my figures are accurate, I said;
Okay so if I pay £120 then come 16 October SP will owe me around £83.69 and 4 days later a further payment of £120 would be taken meaning after 1 year and 4 days with SP they would owe me £203.69!
Well apparently that is allowed and can be offset against future use:rotfl:
At this point I explodeded and advised him I was not listening to this BS any longer and demanded the DD was set back to £97.65, as it is my money, not theirs and I will choose what, when and how I pay. Not surprisingly he refused, so I demanded to speak to a manager, he said I couldn't........ Wrong answer, so he got both barrels again.:mad:
Eventually he decided to raise it as a complaint and advised me I would receive a callback as Customer care were too busy to speak to me. That callback would be in the next 5 working days............
I blew my top again, told him what a garbage service time that was and told him to note on my account that unless a call was received today, I would cancel my DD as soon as this months payment had gone through and pay manually each month thereafter. He tried to tell me that I couldn't do that, so he got the sharp end of my tongue yet again.
I immediately went online and saw he had raised the complaint, took the details and found a direct number to Customer Care. I rang up and within 30 seconds my DD was reduced back to £97.65 because the guy could see exactly the point I had made and that come October I will be level. The amount paid will equal the amount used over the year.
I also advised him that if my calculations prove to be wrong (they won't) I pay any shortfall in full in October. I think that is more than fair enough.
These energy companies think that they are a law unto themselves and can ride roughshod over people without a care in the world, making their obscene amounts of profit every year and still hiking proces up all the time.
Well not this one they don't:D The most galling thing though is there are probably hundreds of thousands of people out there, that are getting treated like this and don't know how to work it out themselves. So just accept these payment hikes and go without other things, even food because they are on limited incomes.
The whole set up needs investigating and someone needs to come down on these companies really hard and stop them screwing people like they do.
Rant Over!!!!
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Comments
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But how much do you have to pay to balance the books at the end of March 2014? Not all suppliers care what your anniversary of joining is - they will want to adjust it to March/April.0
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Why not just save the amount yourself every month and pay quarterly on an account with a decent prompt payment discount?
You may save a small amount paying by dd, but look at the stress it is causing you!0 -
I joined on 16 October 2012 so by 16 October 2013 I should not owe them and they should not owe me. If this is the case the payments I have made each month are correct............
I think the 'flaw' in your argument is, as indicated above, that all? of the computer algorithms for all companies get their customer's accounts to balance at a date in Spring.
The program doesn't allow for a bespoke date to be set unless there is manual intervention - as is obviously happening now in your case.
Whilst I understand the point you are making, the discount we all get for payment by Direct Debit is of a much greater magnitude than any loss of interest we might suffer from being a hundred or so pounds in credit.
With millions of accounts it is not practical to have all payments calculated manually as you have done.
Your concern presumably is your loss of interest for the time your account would be in credit?? If not please say why.
You could always pay quarterly in arrears, and thus get interest on those monies for 3 months. However you would lose your DD discount.0 -
But how much do you have to pay to balance the books at the end of March 2014? Not all suppliers care what your anniversary of joining is - they will want to adjust it to March/April.
I appreciate that and it is part of the problem, they want me to conform to a payment plan that suits their ends and don't give a damn about the end users budget, as long as you don't ever owe them any money.
I won't budge on my position though, I didn't with EDF or British Gas and I never had a problem like this today!
If in the middle of October my payments match my use then that should be accepted. Proof of the pudding and all that.
If it was done their way it would be wrong anyway, as 12 x £120 is £1440 and my usage is £1172. I appreciate that they may alter the payments up and down over the course of the year to combat that happening but that does not suit my budget. I need to know where I am and paying the same amount each month is best for me and achieves the same end result. Which is exactly how monthly direct debit worked for a long time before they started messing around with it.
The main thing about today that really got me more than anything was the attitude of their staff. The manner I was treated from the outset was some of the worst customer service I have ever received. It is the customers money at the end of the day and they need to realise that!0 -
Nope, your figures do not really add up.
Let's say you made seven payments November through June and will make eight payments July through March
7 x £97.65 + 8 x £120 is about £1650. You claim yourself you use £1172 over a year and you are £88 in debt. That means you will only have £390 left over to cover five months from November until March. Hardly outrageous.0 -
No that is not correct, my figures do add up. My usage for the year is £1172. that usage is within about £20 to £30 over the years, the same each year.
The bulk of my usage occurs from November through to March/April, as I expect do oes most peoples. The period from April to Oct/Nov I use the least. However the total of all qurterly bills still amounts to between £1140 and £1172 over the last 7 years when calculated out using todays prices.
12 x £97.65 = £1171.80
The only reason my account is in deficeit today is because the monthly payment doesn't hit the account until the 20th of the month.
So on 20 July my account will be back in credit.
Between now and 16 October I will use £181 of electric, which is around that same amount for each of the last 7 years.
So today I owe £88 add the 181.00 until October means a cost of £269. So in October I will owe £269 before payments I make.
July/August/ September = 98.00 x 3 = 294
294 Paid
269 Owed
= 25.00 in credit at the point of being with SP for 1 year.
My spreadsheet is 100% accurate, it has calculated all my electric costs for the last 7 years and they all match up to the suppliers bills to within a few pennies, which is something to do with the way the supplier rounds the figures to the way Excel rounds the figures but it is only a few pennies.0 -
The fact that I am in defeceit at certain times of year is balanced out over the whole 12 month period. I am currently paying £98 a month but only using £30. If I had joined in May or June and not October. I would have paid out a lot more than I have used but over the 12 month period it would balance. itself out.0
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I appreciate that and it is part of the problem, they want me to conform to a payment plan that suits their ends and don't give a damn about the end users budget, as long as you don't ever owe them any money.
I won't budge on my position though, I didn't with EDF or British Gas and I never had a problem like this today!
The fact that you won't budge on your decision doesn't make your stance correct.
Of course 'they want you to conform to a payment plan that suits their ends' That is the reason they offer a good discount for their Direct Debit plan and get you sign a mandate to that effect.
They have millions of customers and a multi-million pound computer system that is set up for their Direct Debit plan. It cannot cope with your wish to pick your own aniversary date.
It seems you have had the same dispute with Scottish Power, EDF and British Gas.
Essentially you want the DD discount, but want to make up the rules - all for the sake of a few pence interest which is tiny compared with the DD discount.
IMO Scottish power should just cancel your direct debit agreement and put you on quarterly billing or a pre-payment meter; or any measure to get you to take your custom elsewhere.0 -
Not gas or electricity related but I have just paid Virgin Media £120 in advance to save £59 on my internet service for the next year.
I would do the same with Eon, even pay £1,200 a year in advance if it meant 5% savings but seemingly Eon are not interested.
Any savings of 2% or above are better than what I am getting from my bank, except the 5% less 20% tax I am getting on £2,500 from Nationwide0 -
The fact that you won't budge on your decision doesn't make your stance correct.
Of course 'they want you to conform to a payment plan that suits their ends' That is the reason they offer a good discount for their Direct Debit plan and get you sign a mandate to that effect.
They have millions of customers and a multi-million pound computer system that is set up for their Direct Debit plan. It cannot cope with your wish to pick your own aniversary date.
It seems you have had the same dispute with Scottish Power, EDF and British Gas.
Essentially you want the DD discount, but want to make up the rules - all for the sake of a few pence interest which is tiny compared with the DD discount.
IMO Scottish power should just cancel your direct debit agreement and put you on quarterly billing or a pre-payment meter; or any measure to get you to take your custom elsewhere.
They can stick the DD discount where they like, it is a measly £10 per year and got nothing to do whatsoever with my point.
If at the end of my first year my payments match what I have used then that has been a successfull direct debit plan. Part of the reason they want me to pay more as I have found out tonight, is because they have decided that during the next 12 months I will use 3500 units of electricity more than I have ever done in nine years living here. So they have whisked up their own numbers to justify their increase.
Well I will not be paying it, it has been reset to £97.65 and they don't have a problem with that, why? Because the guy in complaints agrees with my figures and that come October it will all be levelled out.
It is just the little hitlers on the front desk that cause the problems by refusing to lower payments. They are the ones that need to realise whose money it is and its not theirs..............
The bottom line with energy companies is they want you being in credit all year round because that suits their ends. They have no debt to think about if everyone is in credit and they take all that extra money and earn massive amounts from it.
That is why they want it to work their way. So if you are happy to swell their profits further by giving them money that isn't necessary then you do so.
For me it will be done my way in the end. Which if it was so bad afterall, they would not have agreed to reverting my payments today and 3 months ago when they tried it on.
I am happy to pay for what I have used over the year but not an amount on top just to keep them money in the bank.0
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