Scottish Power - Please help me get my money back...

Swannette

Hello,
I'm a single working mum with 2 teenage sons and over 2 years ago I switched gas and electricity supplier to Scottish Power, they advised me that my monthly payment for the two should be £192 which was set up by direct debit.

The last couple of years have been tough for me emotionally due to a relationship breakdown and I confess that I had my head in the sand a bit when it came to household bills etc. as far as I was concerned no news was good news and if I wasn't being chased by anyone for money then I assumed all was well.

Over the last couple of weeks I've been trying to find ways to cut back on outgoings because things were getting really tight and I managed to get into my SP account online and to my shock I was around £2,500 in credit. My son read the meters and posted the readings online and we waited a few days for it to go through and the final balance shows as £2,557.98! How can SP have allowed my account to be so ridiculously in credit? It says on their site that if a customer is in credit by more that what they pay in per month then it is automatically refunded (over £50), so why haven't they refunded me?? They even had the cheek to put my direct debit up from £192 to £194 per month in Nov'13 when at the time I was £1,975 in credit!

I can't get through on the phone, they just keep me on hold forever and then cut me off, the callback service had me waiting around for 2hours tonight only to be told the call had failed. I've emailed but no reply and the website only shows how to pay in not how to get your over paid money back!

Please can someone out there advise me what to do.
Many thanks, Swannette.

A.Penny.Saved

First of all, download every statement that you can. You need proof that they owe you money so make sure that you get it ASAP. Accessing their site at times can be difficult but it must be done.

Next send them a registered letter to their head office with your account details and tell them that you want a refund to your bank account immediately. Keep copies of all correspondence and keep logs of everything that you do to resolve it, get a diary to do it.

Ask them to lower your payments to zero or £1.

If nothing happens within a few weeks, go and speak to the citizens advice bureau.

BTW they owe me money as well and I am leaving them soon so I intend speaking to them to get my money refunded. It's not £2000+ but every little helps. When you get it repaid, treat yourself a tiny bit.

Pincher

On the Scottish Power website, click on My Account at the top,
then Manage My Payments,
then Manage My Direct Debit

It's locked when a Direct Debit is happening soon, and you can't really set your own monthly DD, but you can request an adjustment. I managed to reduce the DD from £245 down to £131, without having to call.

Based on what happened when I switched from one fix to the next, the system just generates a perfunctory e-mail, which sits in a queue, until a pasty faced admin slave looks at it, and actions it.

Scottish Power claims most of their customers prefer to leave the surplus in the account. So you need to ask for a refund. Do come back and tell us if you got a cheque, or a bank transfer. I think they like to send a cheque, so they can make it payable to the wrong person, and send it to the wrong address. And yet on the books, they can claim they made a refund.

flossy_splodge

Pincher wrote: »

On the Scottish Power website, click on My Account at the top,
then Manage My Payments,
then Manage My Direct Debit

It's locked when a Direct Debit is happening soon, and you can't really set your own monthly DD, but you can request an adjustment. I managed to reduce the DD from £245 down to £131, without having to call.

Based on what happened when I switched from one fix to the next, the system just generates a perfunctory e-mail, which sits in a queue, until a pasty faced admin slave looks at it, and actions it.

Scottish Power claims most of their customers prefer to leave the surplus in the account. So you need to ask for a refund. Do come back and tell us if you got a cheque, or a bank transfer. I think they like to send a cheque, so they can make it payable to the wrong person, and send it to the wrong address. And yet on the books, they can claim they made a refund.

I'm really surprised at what you write.
I have NEVER had a problem logging in to my account and indeed my fathers, which I manage, and have never had a problem speaking to anyone on the phone.
I think you've been unlucky.
Mind you, I DO monitor both accounts monthly, give monthly meter readings and adjust payments immediately if usage has changed a lot.
I do hope you get this sorted out as that's an awful lot of money.
I do just offer you the thought that I had similar with British Gas at my father's. They owed him over £2000 and it was the very devil to get the money back.
That's why I left.;)
Good luck:)

JustKeepSwimming_2

Wouldn't bother trying to email SP via their website - I'm having an on-going battle about being on the wrong tariff which has been going on for months & out of 6 emails I've sent they only claim to have received 1 (although their site resends my email back to me a few days later after I get their automated we've got your email response).

Spent several hours waiting on the phone only to never get through, & their promised call backs never appear.

As I'm only being charged £20 pcm by them & have been in arrears for several months (DD all set up to £65 but they seem incapable of claiming it), I'm betting they'll get in touch with me at some point when they finally get around to it.

I must get around to writing another letter & sending it as they've ignored the last one I sent. Sigh.

Shocking service. But not convinced that any of the other suppliers will be any better sadly.

Best of luck OP - I don't think they look automatically at how much you are in credit. I've been in credit which should have been refunded automatically but wasn't. Amazingly that was refunded after only 2 phone calls but that was 5 years ago.