15month old Scottish Power bill: entitled to bill reduction?

HeyBigSpender

So having begged over the phone and by email and filed customer complaints all if which were ignored, I finally received my electricity bill for the past 15 months from Scottish Power and I owe them £700. Great. Of course it is on the most expensive tariff, because they wouldn't bill me I couldn't set up a direct debit discount or request online billing or fixed price tariffs etc. etc.

On the basis that they just ignore every attempt to contact them, do you think there is any point in asking them to rebill me with discounts that would have applied if they had billed me when they should have 15 months ago?

I am entitled to go to the Ombudsman on the basis that my first customer complaint was about 8 months ago, but I'm not sure I can handle the hassle of it all as I have so much going on right now. But is that the only way I can organise some kind of breakdown payment option? I can't pull 700 quid out of nowhere at the moment. As they are billing for energy used over a year ago can I ask for a reduction because they never bothered billing me? Or am I just chasing rainbows?

HeyBigSpender

According to the citizens advice bureau, at this website: http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/

"If you have made efforts to contact your supplier and they failed to provide a bill, they cannot charge you for energy you used more than a year ago."

Is this the case? How do I pursue it?

Joyful

I would write to them headed Complaint. Advise them due to the billing code to rebill you for only 12 months usage. Also ask to be billed at whatever tariff you would have chosen. You can also ask for the balance to be included in a payment plan with your ongoing usage over 12 months.

andrew-b

As a scottish power customer myself, if i were you i would switch away as soon as you can rather than getting stuck in a contract at this company. Though that means clearing the debt.

How did you become a scottish power customer ? When you became a scottish power customer what deal did you sign up with?

£700 isn't massive usage for 15 months - £46.66 a month. You should have put money aside to cover it ..at least that's what i would do if my bills weren't being paid.

HeyBigSpender

Thanks Joyful and Andrew. I'm in a funny situation where I only thought I would be in this flat for a few months, but am still here over a year later, so rather than change supplier and the associated hassle, when I moved in I thought I'd just go with whatever the flat had, and gave them my moving in reading and tried to sign up with them with a low tariff which they said fine sorted, but no documentation ever came. Every time I contacted them by phone (on cost-a-fortune numbers with long queues... I don'tt have a landline for reasons outlined above) they apologised and said they would sort it, which never happened. Every time I sent an email, I got an auto response. When I filed a complaint, the autobot said they would reply within 5 days. When I sent another complaint about a month later about them not responding to my complaint, the autobot said they would reply within 5 days. Talk about groundhog day!

Andrew, yes I have kept it in mind that I would have an ever increasing bill on the horizon, but because of personal circumstances I have a lot of outgoings at the moment, and this bill was, after over a year, becoming somewhat mythical. I will be able to make the payment, but obviously it would be so much easier if I could do it in smaller chunks, particularly so close to Christmas. :-(

Joyful, I think I will take your advice and see where it takes me...

HeyBigSpender

Just a quick update. Rather than sending them a letter (I know, I know) I just thought I'd phone them and try and just get it sorted and over with. A woman at their call centre told me that since Scottish Power were aware of me from the outset, that the 12 month billing thing did not apply. I said I believed that it was because they didn't bill me that that was the case. She said, no, I was on their system from the beginning, but there was a system error that caused the bill not to be issued. Therefore, the 12 month back billing thing didn't apply because it was a system error issue, not an issue of Scottish power refusing to bill me.

Sounds fishy to me and frankly if I had more time on my hands right now I would be querying that. I just thought I would put that out there in case other people are having similar trouble and would like my experience of it. In my case, I just requested that my payments were spread out and that I would be billed retrospectively with their cheapest tariff, which is significantly cheaper.

Then they reissued the bill without the retrospective tariff applied so have just phoned them and they say they will send another. I'm not holding my breath.

I feel sorry for the exhausted sounding people in their call centres, having to deal with customers who are victims of Scottish Power's hopeless system management. My problem must be fairly typical, so much so that the people I have spoken too don't sound remotely surprised, nor are they remotely apologetic (don't get me wrong, not that the people on the phone should be personally, but I get the impression they have been told not to express regret for the company because it is effectively an admission of incompetence on the part of the company). It is ludicrous that the people running these companies earn so much when they are run so badly. I fully intend to change suppliers to one of the smaller ones with better reputation as soon as I am in a position to do so.