Scottish Power are atrocious - avoid!

backfoot

trotter09 wrote: »

I am with Scottish Power. They have the best dual fuel rates in our area and are just fine when it comes to customer service, and the website is easy to use.

Just to balance things up.

It doesn't balance things up sadly. Your situation should be the norm. Billing gas and electricity is simple but Scottish Power have demonstrated and admitted to severe problems with the introduction of a new Customer Service/Billing system.

As a result Ofgem suspended them from acquiring new customers for a period of time until things improved.

There are now new threads which keep appearing, which show that not only is that system losing data, but the back billing correction is flawed. This means that SP are producing inaccurate bills for those customers affected.

It is fine to say that your account is operating correctly and you are currently lucky. The OP is struggling to unravel their billing issues and the complaint process is also failing to resolve it.

NPower have just been fined £26m for similar poor systems and poor complaint processes.

Customers are well advised to steer clear of SP for the time being. I have switched for the very same reasons as the OP.It is head in the sand to argue that there aren't severe problems.

Hern

teddysmum wrote: »

I didn't read your post as it was too long, but you cannot expect people not to use SP, based on your experience. Every supplier will have customers with reason to complain, so if people took their advice to avoid, there would be nowhere to buy their energy.

A post such as this would tend to make me think you're actually the CEO of one of the UK's energy supply companies, so epically have you failed to grasp the implications of what you actually said.

Fact is, if people took advice to avoid suppliers said by many a customer to be unfit to have anyone's money, then those suppliers would eventually find themselves on the receiving end of the collective animosity of consumers rather than the criticism of just one customer. Those companies would not get the business. Would not make the profits. Would not want to continue on in the sector.

If you genuinely believe that they're-all-as-bad-as-each-other, and therefore, that the market is now so scandalously dysfunctional that consumer choice is non-existent, then instead of posting on here you should be dropping a line to your MP, asking him/her to raise your concerns with the Secretary of State for Energy, Amber Rudd.

The defeatism so noticeable in your post is music to the ears of energy companies whose profitable existence depends on customers resigning themselves to expensive fates which should never for a moment be tolerated.

Hern

Beckyjuice wrote: »

I am finally posting here after much stupidity from Scottish Power. I gave them long enough to sort out their act, and have now voted with my feet, but thought some advice for potential consumers may be prudent. . . Seriously - avoid them like the plague, unless you have money to burn.

One of the great classic OPs. Haven't read a better one in years. Many, many thanks for taking the time and trouble to post here and to reproduce a letter which, though it will likely baffle the hell out of Scottish Power Customer (sic) Service, is a sheer delight. Whatever you do, please do NOT forget to provide an update as and when -- you are by no means alone in your situation. . .

Hern

poppellerant wrote: »

. . . If it were me, I'd phone them up and refuse to hang up until they put you through to the complaints department. A lot of agents will almost flat out refuse to put you on hold, but what they aren't telling you is this is because the complaints queue is so long that it will mess up that agent's call statistics.

Ohhh nooo-ooo, poppellerant, nooo-ooo. . . OK, I'm not seeking to have a falling out or anything because I know where you stand on an issue such as this and share your concern, but it's always -- always -- been my view that, to misquote the great Sam Goldwyn, a telephone conversation is not worth the paper it isn't written on.

By which I mean:

Disputes with energy supply companies are about money, and the money relates to facts, and so the facts should be on record. Not somewhere out in the ether, lost forever or ready to be brought back in a version of truth that isn't actually the truth at all.

My own energy supplier was kind enough to recently advise me, in what seems to have been its 1,792nd scripted email apology for "failing to provide you with the service which you have a right to expect from us", that it has invested £millions in customer service call handlers . . .

. . . and I'm not at all surprised.

Because call handling is exactly what energy companies rely upon: customers queuing for hours to get through to someone who will extend a promise / give an assurance / make an admission. . .

. . . none of which counts for the slightest in the way of being objective fact set down on documented record.

I really cannot stress it enough: energy suppliers depend on customers ringing 'em up because if it isn't written down then it doesn't count: unlike written, dated, signed correspondence, a telephone conversation will always be susceptible to misrepresentation at a later date such that it can be said to (a) have never occurred or (b) been the subject of an unfortunate misunderstanding ('by all concerned', is the companies' favourite addendum to that, by way of demonstrating that really, it's not all their fault, guv.)

My own energy supplier's investment in yet more call agents signals to me nothing more than an investment in greater profit-making. And as those profits can only be made at my expense, then the very last thing I'm going to do is actually. . . talk to them.

I now have on file a fully documented, inarguable record of correspondence between myself and my supplier, one which is ready to go to an Ombudsman Service that has so very often said how much time it takes to investigate, er, anything -- time taken up in establishing just who-said-what-to-who-and-when.

Existence of an indisputable written record requires no such lengthy investigation or second-guessing -- albeit I have to admit that in my own case, the standard of my supplier's written correspondence is such as to suggest that its authors have had but a brief and largely accidental encounter with the English language. . .

. . . and in one case, no encounter at all, seeing that -- as the record shows -- I am in receipt of a lengthy email written entirely in not one but two foreign languages.

tinacee1

A friend is experiencing exactly the same problems. 13 bills all with different amounts some saying in credit some saying in debit. Absolute lunacy. I am going to contact them on his behalf as he is unwell at the moment and this debacle is making him worse.

daveyjp

Are all of you with problems on direct debit accounts, or does it affect quarterly credit account holders too?

backfoot

daveyjp wrote: »

Are all of you with problems on direct debit accounts, or does it affect quarterly credit account holders too?

I pay by Direct Debit. What is the relevance of your question?

The problem involved loss of historical gas billing data, resulting in the production of one large bill backdated to April 2013. This backdated bill was too complex to unravel.

When a manual equivalent was produced, albeit still complex, it resulted in different balances and different billing detail to the first bill.

Scottish Power accepted the initial bill was wrong and paid me compensation.

Subsequently on switching supplier they used a different closing meter reading to that which had been passed by the data flow provided by the new supplier.

They only discovered this when I raised the issue with them.

These are totally fundamental billing issues which should be routine for any customer. SP are going backwards not forward in this now mature Energy Supply Business.

Lychee

Just adding that I've also had major problems re billing with Scottish Power. Three customer service reps contacted me with different solutions to resolving my complaint, none of them communicated with each other and each claiming they are right whilst the others are wrong. I contacted Citizens Advice and have preferred going through them to communicate with Scottish Power as I'm fed up of the lies that the customer service reps come out with and they have a favourite line "we've done all we can, there's nothing more Scottish Power can do to help you". extremely unhelpful bunch

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

No, yet again, I have no problem with SP. Have done billing online every three months, check tariffs, and when too far in credit, they refund. And it has been this way for twenty plus years now. And it includes time at university, where they were very good, and a bonus £120 last winter because I was unemployed.

Move along the bus.

poppellerant

Hern wrote: »

Ohhh nooo-ooo, poppellerant, nooo-ooo. . . OK, I'm not seeking to have a falling out or anything because I know where you stand on an issue such as this and share your concern, but it's always -- always -- been my view that, to misquote the great Sam Goldwyn, a telephone conversation is not worth the paper it isn't written on.

I see your point about having some sort of paper trail to fall back on. But I've always been able to resolve issues over the telephone - sometimes this might take more than one call, I admit.