Scottish Power Causing Poverty!

Star_NCB

I moved into a rented Housing Association property in July 2014 with my 3 children. I am a lone parent in receipt of Income Support and Disability Living Allowance (I have Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). I also have a child with mild Cerebral Palsy. I was told that Scottish Power was my electricity supplier, there is no gas in the property, and the heating is electric storage heaters. I've never lived in a home with such heating before and it took a while to understand how it worked. My property is an 18 year old 3 bedroom end terrace house. When I moved into the property I set up a monthly Direct Debit of £133.34 which was the amount Scottish Power said would cover the bills based on the previous occupants usage (a man with muscular dystrophy who felt the cold).
I didn't receive a single bill at all during the first 15 months but didn't think much of it as my DD was going out every month. However, it September 2015, I logged into my bank account to find nil pounds available! Now I have a £100 overdraft which I never touch, my balance is always in credit. I checked my statement to discover Scottish Power had taken a payment of £400 the previous day! I had received nothing from them to inform me of this. I phoned the bank and they said they would return the money to my account and to contact Scottish Power, which I did.
According to Scottish Power, my account was over £600 in debt and so they had increased my DD payments to reduce the debit. I then got quite angry that not only had I not received a bill from them in 15 months but that they had not once contacted me to inform me of the rising debt and neither had they contacted me about increasing the monthly DD! I explained that they had left me in financial hardship and that I had had to request a refund from the bank as I was going to become severely overdrawn if my regular monthly DD payments to all my other bills went out.
I was put in touch with Shelter, an organisation who helped people like me who got into debt with energy suppliers. Now up until this point, I had never been in debt with a supplier before, not in my entire adult life! A very nice man called Andrew came to my home and told me that there was a hardship fund which energy companies use to clear the debts of those facing financial hardship with their bills. We filled in all necessary paperwork and a short time later I was informed that my debt had been cleared.
Now, while this was a huge relief, I also found it pointless because as I saw it, the debt was only going to rise again! There was no way I could afford to increase the monthly DD on my income.I wouldn't actually mind being charged so much if my house was warm, but it is freezing!!! I also couldn't use less energy without switching off all the heaters in my home and as it is I only use two anyway! One in the living room and one in the hallway. It also transpired that my heating is controlled by a Scottish Power remote teleswitch, which means they decide when my heating comes on and for how long. I have absolutely no control over it at all!!
Someone from the housing association came out and did a survey on my home and found it didn't meet government guidelines as it failed an energy efficiency test. This meant that my heating had to be replaced/upgraded, BUT, the housing association has 2 years in which to do it! Not helpful to me in the meantime.
I contacted Scottish Power to tell them that I couldn't afford to increase my payments and upon looking at the bill for the last 12 months (a little over £1220) it appeared I had been charged more than the stated amounts per unit and for the standing charge! Scottish Power refunded this money and also switched me to a cheaper tariff. My debt continued to rise again. Scottish Power then increased my DD to £146.87 a month (again without telling me).
I joined MSE and compared energy suppliers. I also went on a price comparison website to search for cheaper suppliers. However, when I found a cheaper supplier and tried to switch over, I was informed of the following (an extract from the email I received):

Unfortunately your switch application to iSupplyEnergy has been rejected by the supplier. This is due to the national database reflecting that you have an Economy 10 meter at your property, energy suppliers refer to the national database to identify your energy meter/s and to be able to apply your chosen new tariff correctly.
We are sorry to inform that we are unable to compare households on Economy 10 meters because very few suppliers offer them. There are currently only three main suppliers who cater for Economy 10 nationally: EDF, E.ON and Southern Electric. As exact details can vary by supplier and region, if you are on Economy 10 and have a query about your tariff, we would advise you to contact the supplier directly.

Unfortunately none of these suppliers will save me any money.
I have today discovered that yet again, without notifying me, Scottish Power has increased my monthly DD and taken an amount more than agreed and more than I can afford!
Can anyone please help me?! I am at my wits end. I have even applied to move house because I can't afford to live here anymore. Thanx in advance.

CashStrapped

OK.

First things first. It is very important you understand exactly how your heating system works. My guess is that you are not using it correctly and it is costing you more than it should.

1) Scottish power do not "control" when you can use your heating.

Economy 10 is an energy system for electric only properties. It has a timer switch which gives you periods of cheap rate electricity. Storage heaters may only come on during these hours because this is when they charge and store heat ready to release later in the day.

If you have the settings incorrectly set on the heaters this may also be costing you more.

2) What you need to do is find out exactly when your cheap rate activates and ensure all of your heavy electric use (heating and hot water) is used only in those times.

You must not use portable electric heaters to supplement your storage heaters as you will probably be using the expensive day rate. If you can use them on a cheap rate period may be fine.

Furthermore, ensure your storage heaters are not combination storage heaters. These have an instant heat option but again that will cost a lot to use if you use it during the expensive rate hours. Some people do not even realise they are using it!

Also ensure you do not use the immersion for hot water during expensive rate periods. Ensure you immersion is not on all the time.

3) I would ring the energy company/housing association and see if you can get a meter change to economy 7. This gives you a single block of cheap rate through the night. As more suppliers offer E7 tariffs you will find them more competitive.

4) You must get into the habit of checking your online account and submitting meter readings to ensure you account is up to date. Every time you give a meter reading you get an immediate update which will show if you are in debit or credit and by how much.

The earlier you see you are in debit, the faster you can do something about it.

5) Managing your utilities as with everything in life takes a bit of personal responsibility. You have been very lucky to be able to clear the debt. Now you need to manage your energy use, keep an eye on your account and learn how your heating and hot water works.

Just be thankful you are not on a prepayment metre. I am surprised they did not try fitting one. Avoid being put on a prepayment meter at all costs.

[Deleted User]

As usual CashStrapped has covered virtually everything but do not rely on published times for when the cheap rate is active.Some systems are controlled by timerswitches which do not operate at the times published. Old circular analogue 24 hour timer switches can have their on and off cheap rate anywhere in the 24 hours so if you have got one of them have a close look at the pointers which show on/off. Some digital meters with built in timers can drift an hour or two and all digital clocks including Radio Teleswitch timers stick to GMT so we change an hour back anyway in BST. As Cashstrapped says , its very important to use as much of the heavy usage stuff as possible in the cheap rate .You can end up with some of the cheapest electric in the UK if you use enough.Personally I would much prefer Eco 7 if only for the much larger choice of suppliers. A couple of years ago I was seeing deals with only 4 p /kwhr around for the night rate and tempted myself to run night storage heaters.

Star_NCB

Thanx for your input but unfortunately it doesn't help as I do have my storage heaters set correctly (all two of them that I have switched on) and I know when the teleswitch comes on and goes off (during the night when it's on the cheap rate). When I said I can't control when I have the heating on or off I meant that I can't decide when I need more heat (and get it) and also, I'm supposed to know if the following day is going to be warm or cold so I can decide if I want the heater to store heat overnight for the next day!! Living in the UK means that the weather can change hourly never mind daily! If the forecast says the next day is going to be cold and I have the heaters on, and then the next day happens to be warm, I'm stuck with the hot rooms as the heat will still release. The opposite applies too. Also, the heaters can only hold so much heat and if it's a particularly cold day, even if the settings are set to release the heat steadily throughout the day, it always runs out hours before bedtime and so the room is freezing by mid afternoon.
I have had energy efficiency people out as well as contractors and they all say the same thing; my storage heaters fail to do the job they were designed to do as they are 17-18 years old and outdated, that they need replaced/upgraded, but like I said in my post, my landlord has up to two years to carry out the upgrade which doesn't help me now.

macman

Even the oldest NSH's have 2 controls on them, one to regulate the input and one to regulate the output. So you can use those to control the temp even after the heater has charged up. Yes, you do need to plan ahead a day when using these heaters, but they are far more economic than any other form of electric heating, even if you end up wasting some of the heat.

Richie-from-the-Boro

"I do have my night store heaters set correctly"

- assumption - 1 NSH in your living room, what size ?
- what is the make & model name of that NSH ?
- how many kWh do you use per year ?
- what is the % split between day & night units per year ?
- what tariff name are you on, and what is your area code ?
- how do you use the two (1) input, and (2) output dials in practice ?