Scottish Power are thieving B*******

reevetard

DO NOT USE SCOTTISH POWER - EVER, EVER, EVER!!!

I joined Scottish Power as a result of an energy club email and i've had nothing but trouble since.

I switched direct from the email and was asked to pay £158 per month by DD (which seemed high) and by the beginning of August 2014 had a credit balance of nearly £500 and was still only using £50/60 per month of energy and expected only to be using £100 in winter months. The £158 a month was a significant burden for me and I needed to use the money elsewhere and so I logged into my online account and tried to alter the monthly DD amount to a lower figure, but it would only allow me to increase the amount, not decrease it!!

I tried to contact Scottish Power.....i'm not going to go into too much detail, but it took several hours waiting, over several phone calls, over a period of 3 days to actually get to speak to a customer services representative, a delay which I had never experienced anywhere before, truly unbelievable. When I did finally get through, I requested £350 to be returned to me from my credit balance and I was promised that I would receive it in my account "within 10 working days, but usually it's there quicker"........almost a month later and several more phone calls later, there's still no sign of the money and nobody knows what's going on or can tell me anything about my "missing" payment. I was now only 2 days from my next DD payment at beginning of September and I told the customer services rep that I would be cancelling my DD if my refund did not arrive as I had £hundreds of credit and did not wish to increase that amount any further as I needed it elsewhere and especially now that it seemed impossible to retrieve MY CASH back from them and so I cancelled my DD.

Yesterday I received an email in my online Scottish Power account telling me that I had now been moved to a monthly payment plan, as they had not received a DD from me, ok well that's fine with me, no more credit building up I thought.............BUT here's the punch line, they went on to say that they have put me on to their standard tariff and not only that, that they have backdated the standard tariff charges to the beginning of September on my account and taken a huge wedge of my credit balance against an "estimated bill" for the period from 1st September to 7th November based on standard rate (rates which are hugely worse than the plan I was on) despite the fact that I had added my actual readings in on 31st October.

So, not only are they not returning my credit, they are now trying to steal it from me by backdating standard tariffs on my account!! What possible reason/excuse can there be for doing this? I had £hundreds in credit in my account.

I just can't believe that a company can steal my money in this way, they appear to be above the law......what can I do??? They don't refund my money when I ask for it, then they steal it from me through backdated charges (surely this is illegal?) and there appears to be nobody that I can call to help me with this? Ofgem aren't interested and the Ombudsman says I have to follow the complaints process for 8 weeks before they can do anything....all of my bloody money will have been stolen by then!

Can anybody suggest a course of action here?

One thing I will say is that I have now seen a huge amount of reports of other people not being refunded and echoing the terrible service of Scottish Power......surely it's time that Moneysavingexpert stopped recommending people to them?

Nada666

You have to set up the initial payment yourself. You have to state what it is. What annual usage did you offer them when you applied? If you are using £60 averaged including winter heating the amount is out of whack. If you are using £50 over summer then the instalment size is only slightly out of whack.

But your usage is slightly unusual - £60 over summer but only an extra £40 for heating is low for heating. So their computers will whack it up a bit.

If you do not wait to have the debit adjusted (yes, they are taking far too long) and do come off the tariff then the bills are (by nearly all suppliers) adjusted to the beginning of the previous quarter.

But you should have started the attempt to adjust your debit right from the start - you have had more than eight weeks to launch a formal complaint.

If you did think you would be using £880 of energy over the year why did you allow double that to be set at the start?

Which energy club sent you the email?

JJ_Egan

Cancelling your DD broke the legal contract you entered into .You are then put on to a standard tariff and you are now free to switch energy suppliers .

Nada666

(Although most of that is in the past. For now, what you should do is find out when you first contacted Scottish Power about the incorrect size debit. You should make the formal complaint to the ombudsman that they have not adjusted the payment promptly and you want to be reimbursed the difference in price of the tariffs until you switch away from Scottish Power (in addition to a bit for poor service). (I take it you have now already applied to change supplier?))

reevetard

Nada666 wrote: »

(Although most of that is in the past. For now, what you should do is find out when you first contacted Scottish Power about the incorrect size debit. You should make the formal complaint to the ombudsman that they have not adjusted the payment promptly and you want to be reimbursed the difference in price of the tariffs until you switch away from Scottish Power (in addition to a bit for poor service). (I take it you have now already applied to change supplier?))

It was the Moneysavingexpert energy club email I switched through, which had all my energy consumption details. The discrepancy in DD was no doubt caused by the fact that the property I rent has extremely old and inefficient electric storage heaters and I bought and started to use oil filled radiators instead of the storage heaters around the time I switched to Scottish Power, which obviously brought the consumption down. I had no idea exactly what the difference would be and having "some" credit in the account for the onset of winter wasn't a perceived problem as bills would no doubt increase, but they just haven't increased very much (which would normally be great!).

I can't remember the exact date I first contacted them about the DD alteration and refund request (it was by phone, sometime in August) and "surprise surprise" they can never tell me when I ask them to confirm the details, because everything mysteriously disappears from their system and they claim that they can't find any details of any requests!

It is my understanding that the ombudsman will only help once I have followed the "complaints procedure" for 8 weeks, by which time my credit will have been swallowed up, likely never to be seen again. So, my priority is to try and get the remaining funds out ASAP, so I have contacted them today and made a request for a cheque refund for the remaining credit on my account (£200'ish) and queried their actions regarding the standard tariff and backdating charges etc and was met with the usual "nothing we can do about that, what's done is done" line from customer services and when I ask to speak to a manager, low and behold none are ever around or available, but will call me back......of course, they never do.

I haven't yet transferred supplier as I am positive that if they see a move request come in, the cheque I have been assured will be sent to me within 10 working days with the remaining credit balance will definitely not arrive (I doubt it will anyway, but will give it a chance for 10 working days only). If the cheque arrives, i'll transfer immediately and then seek a refund of what they charged me on standard tariffs.

The whole thing is just a total nightmare and it seems that once they have sight of your money they will lie and cheat to take it from you and seemingly there is no recourse to stop them doing it, utterly appalling for the consumer.

reevetard

JJ_Egan wrote: »

Cancelling your DD broke the legal contract you entered into .You are then put on to a standard tariff and you are now free to switch energy suppliers .

Cheers for the response.........as per another response I posted, i'm trying to play the game a bit to try and get my remaining credit balance back and am worried that the second a supplier request comes in they'll find a way to nick the remainder of my dosh (£200).

They have already stolen circa £150 through backdating standard tariffs to the beginning of September (I don't see how this can be legal, surely they must notify me of any intended change, before they make the change? not notify me over 2 months after the event and then backdate charges?)) and then they'll hit me with cancellation fees £25 plus whatever else they can make up to stitch me up.

Bluebirdman_of_Alcathays

As Nada says, they wouldn't pluck the DD amount of thin air. It's based on consumption stats, which at some point you provided.

If you stopped paying DD at the beginning of September then this is when they'll date the standard tariff from. Of course it's legal - it is set out in the contract you agreed whenever you switched to SP, so you were given plenty of notice.

I'm not trying to contrary for the sake of it, I just can't see what SP have done wrong here.

JJ_Egan

You are not playing the game by switching to the more expensive standard tariff .

System

[QUOTE=reevetard;66937374

They have already stolen circa £150 through backdating standard tariffs to the beginning of September (I don't see how this can be legal, surely they must notify me of any intended change, before they make the change? not notify me over 2 months after the event and then backdate charges?)) and then they'll hit me with cancellation fees £25 plus whatever else they can make up to stitch me up.[/QUOTE]

You have just accused Scottish Power of theft on a public forum. I suggest that you read up on libel and defamation before posting any more accusations.

Pincher

I have been with Scottish Power for over a year now, having switched through a Quidco cashback deal.


By experience, calling is indeed futile. Fortunately I was on an Anytime tariff, so it didn't cost too much holding using the speaker phone.


Like a real wood worktop, you have to polish the oil in WITH the grain. They will deal with the online requests made through the webpage menus. I have changed tariffs several times now, using the online mechanism. I have also changed the direct debit down successfully, but every time I change tariff, the system will reset the amount. There is a strange requirement to pay a small amount using a credit card (or was it a debit card, I can't remember) when setting up a new DD amount. As I cancel credit cards quite often, so I can apply again for new 0% Balance Transfer deals, I just use a card that will not live long.

reevetard

Bluebirdman_of_Alcathays wrote: »

As Nada says, they wouldn't pluck the DD amount of thin air. It's based on consumption stats, which at some point you provided.

If you stopped paying DD at the beginning of September then this is when they'll date the standard tariff from. Of course it's legal - it is set out in the contract you agreed whenever you switched to SP, so you were given plenty of notice.

I'm not trying to contrary for the sake of it, I just can't see what SP have done wrong here.

I answered the consumption bit previously, clearly my consumption dropped a hell of a lot when I started using oil filled radiators (around the same time I joined SP) rather than the old inefficient storage heaters in the property, hence the out of proportion DD amount. No problem with that, I didn't know what the bills would be and it was likely to take a few months to get some realistic numbers back.

The problem with SP, is that apart from their customer services being the worst I have ever encountered (you actually can't get through to CS most of the time) is that when I did get hold of them to change the DD (would only allow me to increase the DD online) and request a refund of the £hundreds of credit balance in my account and they didn't refund it, despite it being promised within 10 days.....after a month of constant chasing it still hadn't arrived and then I was simply being fobbed off on the phone with numerous excuses and it seemed like I would never see the money and they also didn't change the DD amount........I simply wasn't prepared to continue to build the credit balance by paying the overly high DD and told them I would cancel the DD if I had not been refunded (nobody warned me of any penalties for doing so).

FYI - In the contract you refer to, SP say "We will review your
payment amount every three months to check whether you’re on the right track. If we need to change your monthly payment, we’ll let you know in advance so you can discuss it with us if you need to."...........this never happened, so they breached the contract. Even when I asked them to change the DD, they didn't.

FYI - "Payment for the energy you use is by monthly Direct Debit, if you fail to make a payment to ScottishPower via monthly Direct Debit, we will be entitled to transfer you onto standard prices, and change your payment method to an appropriate cash payment method. To consider the impact on your prices visit our website and review our current Standard Domestic Product leaflet in the Energy Products section at https://www.scottishpower.co.uk. We will notify you of any changes to your payment method and prices should this be necessary"...........I've only just found this and my course of action might have been different had I known, BUT the last sentence makes it clear that they will notify me of any change, but they didn't.......again a breach of their contract. I do not consider notifying somebody over 2 months after the event and then backdating to be acceptable, neither I imagine would a court of law.

So, appalling customer services, not reviewing my DD as per the contract every 3 months, not refunding MY MONEY when asked to do so, not altering DD when asked to do so by the customer and then sneakily backdating 2 months of consumption at standard tariff, contrary to the terms of their contract.................can you get the gist of what they are doing wrong now?