Atrocious Scottish Power customer service

rarelypost

My daughter obtains her electricity from Scottish Power and has a prepayment meter in her garage. She tops up her key at a local newsagent when her credit is running low.

She has lived at this property for ~4 years, this is her first property so she did not carry over any debt from a previous property. She has been getting bills from Scottish Power saying she owes them money. This has usually been around £20. As she purchases credit and is using this I am unable to understand why she needs to be billed and why she owes money.

I have spoken/emailed Scottish Power many times and never cease to be amazed at their total incompetency. On one ocassion they totally ignored my email for weeks and I had to send another before I could actually get them to take any notice. On another ocassion I was told to disregard the bill, my daughter subsequently got another bill for about the same amount. Whilst in conversation with Scottish Power we were told that she would be receiving a bill for £170 but when we spoke to another person at Customer Services a few days later we were told this was rubbish and she owed £20.47.

Over the last few weeks I have been emailing and phoning Scottish Power trying to find out WHY she is in debt. HOW can she be in debt? Surely the whole point of a prepayment meter is that you can only use what you have paid for (plus of course whatever the small emergency is and this as I understand will be debited the next time the meter has credit added).

Scottish Power appear to be unable to actually discuss this matter, they do a cut and paste which does not address my questions.

The latest email from them reads:-

This is to inform you that although you currently have a prepayment meter we will still bill your account every 90 days. We will do this for the following reasons:

- As per our terms and conditions we should bill your account every 90 days. This is to ensure that your meter is working fine and the correct consumption is recorded at your property.

- We need to send the payment breakdown for the energy consumed to all of our customers.

- We need to ensure that your account is billed accurately so that our customers do not face any difficulties in the future while moving house or changing supplier.

- If your account is ever running in a debit balance we need to bill your account regularly so we know when your balance is cleared. This will prevent any over or under charging.

I'm becoming to think it's me that's being stupid and missing something obvious... Anyone with any experience of this problem? Thank You

Wolf3

Sounds like they're having some billing issues there, of which there have been a number of threads on these forums previously.
FYI, if your daughter has a prepayment meter she shouldn't be receiving bills asking for payment. These would be "Statements of Consumption" which all energy suppliers are obliged to produce. afaik standard practice would be billing every quarter and send these statements every 12 months.
I would check with Scottish Power to make sure they have your daughters meter set up on their accounts as a Prepayment meter, often overlooked but should be easy to rectify and also get them to check any debt settings on the meter. Its very rare but there might be an incorrect debt on the meter but a zero repayment rate applied

Scotlands_Lite

Billing problems & poor customer service have certainly been an issue for many SP customers since they migrated accounts to their new system at the start of 2014...how long has your daughter been having these problems with them or when did the (supposed) debt repayment bills start to appear?


Remember though that there are valid reasons why SP might perceive an outstanding debt on a PAYG meter....


The final balance of the previous occupant could have been based on estimated readings (did your daughter provide an actual reading when she moved in?)
There could be missing payments that haven’t registered on her account - does she keep all her top-up receipts to show credit payments have been accepted / successful (it should clearly state this on the receipt)
The previous occupant may have left whilst still in debt and SP are now trying to collect this from your daughter


Have you read through their PAYG Charter...


https://www.scottishpower.co.uk/pdf/SP_Customer_Charter_PREPAYMENT_-_Nov_12.pdf


...to see if there are any points you can challenge the alleged debt on?


Try calling this dedicated SP complaints number to raise the issue 0800 001 5228 (if you haven't already done so or if the problem has been on-going for 8 weeks or more, ask them to give you complaint reference number)

rarelypost

Wolf3 and Scotlands_Lite – many thanks for both your posts, apologies for my delayed reply.

Since posting my original rant I’ve emailed Scottish Power again – and again they just ignore my mails. The infuriating thing is I get an automated acknowledgement so they ARE getting my mails – they just can’t be bothered to reply. On the odd occasion when they do reply they appear to have a very short attention span and can only quote passages (often irrelevant) from a prepared script then ignore further mails.

I phoned 0800 001 5228 as you suggest and spoke to a very helpful lady called Gill who was based in Warrington. Incidentally this number apparently is only for customers who are billed quarterly and not those who have a pre-pay meter like my daughter. However sensing my frustration she tried to help by explaining that my daughter did not owe any money although the word ‘debit’ appeared regularly on statements she has been getting. Apparently Scottish Power accounting works this way - she didn’t seem to know why – it just did. Presumably lots of other people must get these Prepayment Electricity Statements where under Account Summary it says – Your account balance £**.** and underneath “in debit”…

These are some of the people I communicated with at Scottish Power:-

Kirsten
Jeanette
Pauline
Priyanshu Sharma (Customer Services Representative)
Saurabh Garg (Customer Services Representative)
Mohit Wadhwa (Customer Services Representative)

There will have been others whose names I didn’t initially record, not realizing this saga would last so many many months…

Based on some of the above names I presume Scottish Power have a Call Centre in India. I know PlusNet had one outside the UK at one time and they had so many problems they replaced it with one in Sheffield.

SO, I think the matter is solved courtesy of Gill in Warrington. Bottom line is if you have a pre-pay meter, Scottish Power may send you statements saying you are in debit - but you may not be...

Thanks again Wolf3 and Scotlands_Lite.

superbigal36

A simple example of how you can run up a debit is if you used someone elses payment key.
Not saying this is the case but shows how it can happen.
When I were just a lad in my first flat you used to buy of the shelf payment cards from the corner shop to put in your prepayment meters.
Fortunately I was savvy enough to realise that when a bloke was selling a £10 card for £5 in the pub, yes I would get a tenner of electric but no credit to my account.

moneysavingscouser

I worked in a Scottish Power call centre, there is a big one in Liverpool with 350+ poor souls, who are good workers for the main and decent people, but the software they use and equipment might have been state of the art way back in the 90s.

Another way of getting debt on a prepayment would be to leave it till it runs out and accumulates debt beyond the £5 which you get. For example, someone who perhaps went abroad for 6 months would find a debt on a prepayment if not topped up. You may not get electricity but they, Scottish Power, want the standing charge still.

You can inherit prepayment debt (always give a move in reading asap) or as stated, back in the day, use tokens. Nowadays, do not think another persons key would top up your meter.

Best way to get Scottish Power to do anything is to complain and make sure you get the all important complaint number! This is all recorded, your call, every note taken by the phone op and if SP have done something wrong, only a complaint seems to get the wheels in motion, and one of the really clued up workers (super users) or higher graded agents actually know the computer systems well enough to actually make things happen.

The Scottish Power call centres are operated by Capita, who, in my opinion, would be hard put to organise the proverbial drink in a brewery.

Good luck!