MSE News: Ofgem orders Scottish Power to shape up or stop selling

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  • To test how bad they are ring Scottish Power free from a landline on 0800 0270072, hold for further options and then press 4. Present Q time is about 50 minutes.
  • minislim
    minislim Posts: 357
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    edited 14 November 2014 at 4:14PM
    is that the same new customer service system thats they've had for 3 years or so?

    or is it just the same excuse being used again.

    when i was with SP i had cheaper energy. yet their useless billing system kept on hiking bills.

    and when i had accrued a massive credit on my account it took ages to get a refund.

    and when i left they couldnt even get my meter reading right. even though i had given them the day before my switch date.

    useless! but ofgen are also useless as they're all take and no action!
  • Hi what a bad company they want to up my direct debit currently paying 69 pound a month. They put it up to 150 a month. And on this new system. It can be lowered to 120. All because. 159 debit. And direct debit comes out end of month. If dd came out first of month. There would be no debit. Nightmare. I'm going to switch. And not use this company again
  • Had them trying to keep me as a customer today for a £30 saving on the deal that I've just left them for.
    This got me sorting out my parents bills as they're coming up the end of their contract and they haven't had a bill from Scottish Power since January. The websites useless system shows 0 gas usage since then.
    Looks like I've chosen a bad day to want to call them (or is that any day?)
  • King_Weasel
    King_Weasel Posts: 4,381 Forumite
    Call me pernickety, but I do like a bill's opening balance to correspond with the previous bill's closing balance. This is evidently beyond Scottish Power's capabilities and after giving them months to sort it out I am switching to Ovo. Other problems with their bills, too. Don't know when, if ever, they will get my closing bill right, though.
    However hard up you are, never accept loans from your friends. Just gifts
  • andrew-b
    andrew-b Posts: 2,413
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    I can't wait until 10th February 2015..the earliest date i can leave Scottish power without £50 penalty! Sick of dealing with this company. Similar to Looker above, they recently switched my fixed deal back to standard energy citing non-payment of direct debit as a reason...yet my direct debit was paid on time. They never apologised and problems are never resolved in a single call like they should be. I switched bank account back in April and have been paying direct debit correctly ever since yet their online systems all still list my old-closed bank account as direct debit and they don't know how to correct it (last i heard they were passing the case to IT). After giving them what-for they switched me back to the fixed product. However i had to phone back again to get the account reconstructed as they'd cancelled all the previous bills back to december 2013.

    This isn't the first time i've had problems with this company. I was already with them a and switched to the current cheaper fixed product that i'm now on in october 2013. They consistently failed to take direct debits back then for 4 months so i was making additional payments and i kept asking them to take it and they kept saying it was setup then it wasn't. At the time they cited it as being due to switching their systems over. It took weeks to sort out and the only way it got resolved in the end was posting them a private message via facebook!

    I'm sure i will have more issues before i leave based on past performance. Used to be with Atlantic (part of SSE) and they were brilliant - i still had issues but they were always resolved within minutes rather than weeks!

    Incidentally my parents had an unsolicited phone call from SP only last week...my mum said it wasn't convenient as she was expecting another call (which she actually was) and the guy was quite rude and aggressive and told her that was the excuse everyone used. She was shocked by their sales attitude.

    I think MSE should take the lead and remove them from their cheap energy club until SP can get their act together. I also don't see why new customers joining via MSE cheap energy club should be favoured any differently to EXISTING customers. Scottish power should be forced to stop taking on any new customers until they've sorted out all the existing one's.
  • joncombe
    joncombe Posts: 320
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    andrew-b wrote: »
    I can't wait until 10th February 2015..the earliest date i can leave Scottish power without £50 penalty!

    You might be able to avoid this. I was actually told (by Scottish Power themselves), I could switch to another of their tariffs without paying an exit fee, the fee is only payable if you switch suppliers directly from that tariff. So you should be able to switch to one of the SP tariffs without an exit fee and then switch suppliers.
  • "I wonder if it's the same system Npower use"

    My thoughts exactly, more of which below...

    This is BS of the highest order. Same situation as Npower. Is it just me or do they not realize that saying everyone is now on this (malfunctioning) billing system is nothing to brag about?

    Lets look at the entire situation shall we? Just think for a second how would and inept uncaring company reduce such a backlog? Bear in mind they and Npower didn't approach the (blind, light touch) regulator. Ofgem swung into action reluctantly when even they couldn't ignore it anymore. They will resolve the backlog by sending out any old rubbish. Ofgem will then declare victory.

    I know it is not Ogfem's concern what particular billing system energy suppliers use but you'd think they'd show some concern if it is the same (or similar) system to what Npower, British Gas and EDF us given that they all had massive problems implementing it.

    Npower's are still ongoing.

    These companies simply aren't being transparent, Npower's implementatin started 3 years ago at my best guess so to blame the system is less than honest.

    For my account Scottish Power seem to be messing up an all of the basics, I can understand teething problems but telling me you don't have readings when you emailed me back the same readings to confirm you have them and then 'correcting' my bill by showing all the usage from your estimate of zero usage to the present reading in one day is a complete joke.

    Fortunately I know what I am doing having worked in the industry, but this makes it all the more arduous when I do contact them as I have to first explain the problem, why it is a problem, and how they should fix it.

    Is there any kind of Ofgem representation on here? I have some questions for them and/or Scottish Power.

    The two hundred million price tag is exactly the same as Npower paid, you know before they (probably) had to pay more money to the company to say please make it work. If it's not the same system I will eat my hat.
  • redux
    redux Posts: 22,976
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    edited 16 November 2014 at 9:22AM
    andrew-b wrote: »
    I think MSE should take the lead and remove them from their cheap energy club until SP can get their act together. I also don't see why new customers joining via MSE cheap energy club should be favoured any differently to EXISTING customers.

    I absolutely disagree.

    Irrespective of some customers having problems, the price comparisons should be available.

    For one thing at least, if Scottish Power was removed from the comparisons, it would be impossible to see how much could be saved by switching away from them.

    For this house on their latest tariff, that saving could be £1 or £3, but I assume it's more for other people on older tariffs.

    If you must leave, first switch to a newer Scottish Power tariff, with no exit penalty. Switch anyway, whether you will leave or not, as their Jan 2016 fix is amongst the cheapest tariffs available, so at least you'll be saving money while you make up your mind.
  • brewerdave
    brewerdave Posts: 8,499
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    My s-i-l recently phoned them because he hadn't had a bill for ~ 10 months - he was promised one -it duly arrived ...but included zero gas usage and zero elec. use,even tho' he had given them updated readings -all they had charged to the bill was ~ 300 days of standing charge!!
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