Scottish Power taken a lot more than I was expecting

chesca05

My electricity DD was set up at £40 every month with ScottishPower which was more than enough to cover my bills, though over the last 4 months I've had a broken boiler and have relied on electric heaters to warm up my home though I didn't think it would add that much more on to my bill. I switched suppliers recently as my fix with SP had come to an end in Oct & just discovered after checking my bank account they have taken a final DD of £163!!
The reading is correct so I must have used this amount but I'm absolutely distraught I can't believe they've taken the money in one lump sum, I don't have this kind of money lying around as I'm sure many others don't, I'm a lone parent on income support and that's more than what I get a fortnight! I just don't know what to do...I didn't realise they could take all that without informing me first??
Is there anything I can do?

DUTR

chesca05 wrote: »

My electricity DD was set up at £40 every month with ScottishPower which was more than enough to cover my bills, though over the last 4 months I've had a broken boiler and have relied on electric heaters to warm up my home though I didn't think it would add that much more on to my bill. I switched suppliers recently as my fix with SP had come to an end in Oct & just discovered after checking my bank account they have taken a final DD of £163!!
The reading is correct so I must have used this amount but I'm absolutely distraught I can't believe they've taken the money in one lump sum, I don't have this kind of money lying around as I'm sure many others don't, I'm a lone parent on income support and that's more than what I get a fortnight! I just don't know what to do...I didn't realise they could take all that without informing me first??
Is there anything I can do?

They did inform you, you get 2 weeks notification before the funds are deducted, how did you expect them to take the money?
Anyways you will have to contact them or more so your bank (or the children's father) to assist with a plan to cover the unexpected deduction. I doubt somehow that SP will re-imburse the funds now, perhaps the bak may help?

Bluebirdman_of_Alcathays

DUTR wrote: »

They did inform you, you get 2 weeks notification before the funds are deducted, how did you expect them to take the money?
Anyways you will have to contact them or more so your bank (or the children's father) to assist with a plan to cover the unexpected deduction. I doubt somehow that SP will re-imburse the funds now, perhaps the bak may help?

Or mother

Nada666

Firstly, as part of the process of preparing to switch, you must have looked at your meters to compare the readings with those on your previous bill - so the vagrant sum can not be a total surprise. (You did do this, didn't you:)?) Even if they hadn't correctly informed you you would have received a demand (you would have been expecting) for some such amount that you knew would have to be paid within seven days.

Having said that, technically, being a direct debit, they should have informed you beforehand. They can do this by email, not just by post. Technically*, if you had no notification, you can invoke your rights under the Direct Debit Guarantee. You will then receive a postal demand for payment (possibly for a higher amount due to forfeiture of discount) that will need to be paid within a few days anyway or risk a creditor default. Or you can just chalk it down to experience and be more careful next time.

*actually, technically, even if they did correctly inform you (as they probably did) you can still invoke the Guarantee - it is entirely at the behest of the consumer, you do not have to prove your case - the bank has to offer it on demand.

Nada666

(And £1.33 extra for electric heating - you can't pretend you couldn't expect it to cost as little as that. That's, on average, 10kWh per day - only five 2kW room hours per day.)

chesca05

DUTR wrote: »

They did inform you, you get 2 weeks notification before the funds are deducted, how did you expect them to take the money?
Anyways you will have to contact them or more so your bank (or the children's father) to assist with a plan to cover the unexpected deduction. I doubt somehow that SP will re-imburse the funds now, perhaps the bak may help?

Firstly I didn't come here asking for judgement, I came here for help.

Secondly they didn't inform me, I have an online account but they usually send me an email when I have a bill available. I have thoroughly searched through my emails but there is nothing, the only reason I realised is when I checked my bank balance today. I went to check my SP account and the bill on there is dated the 27th January so it hasn't been 2 weeks as you suggest.

When I did the switch I hadn't had a bill for coming up to 3 months so so I used my energy consumption for the year before for price comparison as what I had used after then wouldn't have given an accurate view of my usage & I did not think to check my usage since then. So I guess you can call me naive but not ever having used electric heaters before or properly finding out about how much they cost to run I genuinely didn't realise it would add what has worked out to be an extra £60/month onto my bill, I was more concerned with keeping my children warm.

Nada666

chesca05 wrote: »

[...]over the last 4 months I've had a broken boiler and have relied on electric heaters to warm up my home though I didn't think it would add that much more on to my bill.

chesca05 wrote: »

I did not think to check my usage since then. So I guess you can call me naive but not ever having used electric heaters before or properly finding out about how much they cost to run I genuinely didn't realise it would add what has worked out to be [only] an extra £60/month onto my bill, I was more concerned with keeping my children warm.

Of course your are correct to keep your home warm. But equally, with children, you equally have an obligation to keep an eye on your budgeting. Please clarify - was it an electrical central heating boiler that broke down or a gas one? If gas then you aren't really defending yourself very well. If it was an electric boiler then forgive us but you did not make that clear.

As has already been pointed out - systems are all in your favour. You phone the bank, you tell them to give you their money back. You then give them their money back again a few weeks later.

chesca05

I do have a very tight budget that I stick to, I have approx £20 left over a month for emergencies. It was my gas combi boiler that broke down so I didn't have any hot water or central heating so for 4 months we had to rely on going to my sisters house for a bath once a week & boiling the kettle 20 times to get an inch of water in my bathtub the other days.

I am not saying that I do not owe the money, yes I was irresponsible not keeping a check on my usage but I did not expect SP to take that amount of money from account without advising me, this had left me with no budget as I have exactly 11p left in my bank account.

I will speak to my bank tomorrow to try get the money back & will the speak to SP to see if I can come to some arrangement to pay it back in installments, my children going hungry scares me more than creditors.
I have just checked my gas account with npower and I am in credit by nearly £100 after my january bill as apart from cooking on the hob & the standing charge I hadn't used my gas, I will also call them tomorrow to see if I can get this refunded.