MSE News: Scottish Power to pay £8.5m for mis-selling – are you due a share?

Former_MSE_Helen

"190,000 Scottish Power customers will be paid a share of £8.5 million, after Ofgem found it guilty of mis-selling..."

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Scottish Power to pay £8.5m for mis-selling – are you due a share?




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Cardew

With £7.5 million already earmarked for 'warm home discount customers', the additional £1million won't go very far if there are many thousand affected.

In any industry if you employ sales staff on a commission basis you will get mis-selling.

This is particularly true in the Energy market as a great many customers only know how much they pay by Direct Debit and wouldn't have a clue about kWhs - let alone how many they use in a year.

If a customer tells a SP salesperson(or any other company) that they pay £150 a month, how could the salesperson possibly know if that figure reflected an annual bill of £1,800, or was an underpayment or overpayment.

So in the majority of cases the sales rep will reduce the initial DD as an incentive and collect their commission.

zennith

Expect more price rises to cover this compensation.......?

'We' can't have the Share Holders or 'Fat Cats' taking a 'hit' can we! :mad:

William_Barnes

I can remember an SSE salesman calling and telling me his company had taken over supply of the area, which is a blatant lie.

However, I didn't fall for his lies, but I still wasted 5-10 mins of my life that I'll never get back listening to the rubbish coming out of his mouth.

Can I claim compensation, even though I didn't sign up?

Nada666

Disgusting that most of the money is going to some of their richest poor customers. When is this idiotic policy of giving more and more money to those who do not need it end?

minislim

i feel that their more recent fixed price deals may have been effected by miss selling too.

i compared scottish power with my old energy deal with Npower (prior to hikes) and it was only a few pounds dearer. the cost of gas was cheaper and the reduction in unit cost shorter while the electric a little more expensive and the same unit amounts.

we primarily use alot more gas than electric anyway.

so i signed up to it.

over 12 months the amount of energy used is about the same.

yet the direct debit amounts keep creeping up.

it used to be £95 per month and now its up to £135 a month!

something doesnt stack up?

i reckon they're doing the old building up of credit trick which i've read about on here before.

KTF

Are you submitting monthly readings to them?

minislim

yes. i adopted the same method i had with npower. every month i submit them online.

having looked at the structuring of their billing my suspisions of "credit building" seem to be coming true.

im currently in credit by £500 with a direct debit of £135 per month and yet its only summer energy im paying for.

i've also noticed a little note on their latest bill backing this up. it says that they build up credit and may (they indeed say may) reward their customers.

i'd still rather have that money in my bank where i get better interest than what they "may" give me.

Nada666

minislim wrote: »

i feel that their more recent fixed price deals may have been effected by miss selling too.

i compared scottish power with my old energy deal with Npower (prior to hikes) and it was only a few pounds dearer. the cost of gas was cheaper and the reduction in unit cost shorter while the electric a little more expensive and the same unit amounts.

we primarily use alot more gas than electric anyway.

so i signed up to it.

over 12 months the amount of energy used is about the same.

yet the direct debit amounts keep creeping up.

it used to be £95 per month and now its up to £135 a month!

something doesnt stack up?

i reckon they're doing the old building up of credit trick which i've read about on here before.

Rather self-contradictory post. So you are saying that there was no mis-selling and you are paying the price you were offered and there is no dispute over what they said npower were charging you.

Your reason for posting this is?

missbungle

This an old post from 2011 but I just thought I'd repost to see if anything could be done about this.

We moved into an apartment block and were automatically with npower, I did some research online and found my switching to Scottish Power would save us money or so I thought. When I joined SP we started paying £55 a month just for electricity which didn't seem too bad. Then later on in the year it actually went up to £56 which wasn't a problem. The next year it actually went down to £10 a month then to £11 a month that summer. We thought it was quite low but didn't really think to check it out as we just thought we must be using loads less. That year we actually received a letter saying we were in credit by £500 and they sent us a cheque soon after for £250. All this time when they had requested meter readings I had provided them. It's not as straightforward as we don't have access to our meters in the building and we have to ring the company that own the building for someone to come and read them. I rang up to give my meter reading once and the lady on the phone said 'by the way do you know you're in debit by a thousand pounds?' Obviously you can imagine my horror at that. I obviously questioned her and she said that that was how much we owed. After numerous phonecalls we were sent a letter saying we were allowed to pay it back in installments so we worked out we'd pay £104 a month. I ran this by my Dad and he asked for a breakdown of how they came to that amount and he worked out that they had charged us at the higher electricity tariff which was very sneaky. We sent an e-mail with all the workings out at the fairer tariff and they agreed to reduce it to £84. I'm really annoyed because at the bottom of their letters they say that they will let you know of any payment changes. I think they were wrong for charging us £10 or £11 in the first place and it's not our place to question it as they're the service providers. It must have been a mistake that was theirs and we're now paying for it!!! Is there anything we can do or is too late?

We've now paid the debt to them but still don't think it was fair! Has anyone got any advice? This was back in 2011. Thanks!

suzukigirl2009

My Dad had an account with Scottish Power a few years ago but has since passed away. Would my Mum be able to claim back against the company as she still resides at the same address that they were supplying to. :question: