scottish power missed 8 appointments; am I being greedy?

footyguy

snuff2pay wrote: »

I have had an issue with Scottish Power missing appointments to change an economy 7 meter at a property which is not always occupied. On every occasion either myself or my husband has had to undergo a 150 mile round trip to be at the property, losing a day's holiday to do so.

The deadlock letter ( which contains a number of inaccuracies ) suggests that I want over £1000 as a goodwill gesture; I don't, £1450 is to cover our actual costs.

I have applied to the ombudsman but they say that as the complaint was first raised over 9 months ago I am now time barred, even though the job has only just been completed.

I feel really resentful that I am being made to look greedy when, as a result of the tarrif being charged not being clear on the bill, I had already been overpaying for nearly 5 years. In addition, SP knew how much electricity I was using and when, and so there was no need to change the meter anyway.

"Dear Mr xxxxx,

My name is xxxx xxxxxx, and I am your key point of contact for your outstanding complaint.

I am very sorry I have been unable to reach an agreement regarding the resolution of your complaint, the details of which are below.

What we have done to try to reach an agreement with you. At the start of 2016 you requested a meter change to have your Economy 7 meter replaced with a single rate meter. An appointment was arranged to carry out this work. Your normal residence is in Bolton but the property concerned is as per the address above so you had to travel there and back to attend appointments. The job was successfully completed on 21st June 2016 however I acknowledge that prior to this there were numerous problems.


I acknowledge that we failed to carry out the necessary work on 8 occasions on, 2 February 2016, 3 March 2016, 14 March 2016, 11 April 2016, 26 April 2016, 13 May 2016, 31 May 2016 and 14 June 2016

In respect of the appointments not going ahead, 6 of the 8 dates qualified you for a Guaranteed Standards failure payment. There were two of the jobs were where an engineer actually attended your property but the back board on the meter was damaged, so the work could not be completed. We have actually paid you for 7 dates and these were paid to you as follows: 2 x £22.00 on 6 April 2016 and 5 payments of £30.00 on 9th May 2016, 25th May 2016 and 2 June 2016 and 2 on the 13th June 2016. Therefore we have overpaid you by the amount of £30.00.

You have also received 3 x £30 late payment fees as 3 of the GS failure payments were paid outside of the required timescales.
Whilst dealing with your complaint, goodwill payments of £50.00 on 14 April 2016 and £25.00 on 25 May 2016 have already been paid to you.

I have offered you a further goodwill payment of £150.00 in view of the poor service you have received. You have declined this offer and requested a goodwill payment of £1000.00.


Our Final Offer

As a final offer, I have provided this letter and full explanation of the case. You have been paid 7 Guaranteed Standard appointment failure fees (totalling £194.00) and 3 late payment fees for the same (totalling £90.00).
You have also been credited with goodwill payments totalling £75.00. In addition, I have offered to credit your account with a further £150.00 as a gesture of goodwill. This is my final offer and I believe it to be a fair resolution to your complaint. If you wish to accept it, I have provided my contact details above and would ask that you get in touch with me.

If you decide not to accept my final offer we will have reached a 'deadlock' position, which means we cannot agree on a resolution to your complaint. You will therefore be entitled to contact Ombudsman Services: Energy, and have up to 12 months from the date of this deadlock letter to do so.

Should you decide to approach the Ombudsman for a review of your complaint, we will withdraw the offer and await their decision."

Am I being greedy?

That (the highlighted bit) surely cannot be correct. :huh:

According to the response from SP, the first failed appointment was not until 02-Feb-2016, and the last falure was not until 14-June-2016, so you could not have complained 9 months ago.

Go back to the ombudsman and explain that to them.

If you still have no success, ask them for a copy of their own complaints procedure (or seach the 'net for it)

As I understand it, you have requested £1450 in total.
(Don't get too stressed on what it is called, the supplier will deem it a 'goodwill gesture' as otherwise it may leave them open to subsequent litigation - goodwill gestures are provided on a 'without liability' basis)

SP have paid you in total £359 with an additional offer of £150 if you agree tto that to settle the complaint (so a possible total of £509)

The problem essentially is that you have repeatedly continued to do the same thing (made an appointment, took a day off work, travelled 150 miles) and expected a different result. In law you have to mitigate your losses, so after one or two failed appointments, you should have tried something different. e.g. raised a formal complaint, highlighting the expenditure you were incurring attempting to accomodate the supplier, and asking for a proposed resolution at that stage, taking it to the ombudsman then if appropriate). [STRIKE]Perhaps agreement could have been reached to allow you to be charged at a single rate tariff despite having an E7 meter whilst the issue was being resolved? (notwithstanding that is not usually possible with SP) Or perhaps you could have switched supplier to one that does allow this?[/STRIKE][I scrubbed that as it was not the reason for a meter change - my error ]

What you have to decide now is whether or not 'gambling' the £150 payment offered is worth it based on what you think the ombudsman may offer as a resolution.

I'd probably be tempted to go to the ombudsman.
It's free to go to them. The most you could lose out on is the £150 offered (but not yet paid)
I would suspect the ombudman would allow at least travel costs for at least 2 failed appointments in your situation, and this alone would come to £135.
They probably propose even more, but perhaps not the full amount you are hoping for, sorry.

Edit: Btw, the time limit is 6 months from a deadlock letter (or 9 months from originally complaining) not 12 months, as that would make no sense at all. Another thing to complain to the ombudsman service about

Edit 2: Actually the ombudsman can consider any complaint at any time, if they think it appropriate. Whilst this example is from the financial ombudsman rather than the energy ombudsman, you can see the ombudsman accepted a late complaint based on the 'administartive error' of the supplier
http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/technical_notes/six-month-time-limit.htm
(Refer to case study 3)

footyguy

snuff2pay wrote: »

A couple of points.

We were not aware that the backboard was damaged as it was hidden by the meter. It was possibly the result of weathering as every time they missed an appointment we opened the meter cupboard to look in disbelief and to check they hadn't been and replaced it without us being aware. Such repeated exposure to the elements over such a long period of time may well have been the issue!

With regards to the ombusman, this is the Reply we received when we immediately informed them that we had a deadlock letter.

"Thank you for your email about Scottish Power which we received on 11 August 2016.

We are unable to accept your complaint for investigation as the information you have sent shows that you first raised your complaint with Scottish Power more than nine months ago. We are only able to accept complaints that are brought to us within nine months of the issue being raised to Scottish Power. We would only be able to look into the matter further if there were exceptional circumstances that prevented you from approaching us sooner.

If you feel that there were exceptional circumstances that meant you could not bring the complaint to us sooner then please let us know, providing a timeline of events and we will consider whether we are able to accept the complaint for investigation."

It seems that every direction we turn we are met with misinformation and obstacles.

What information can you think you provided to the ombudsman that indicated this? :huh:

footyguy

zaax wrote: »

As MCOL is only £35 it's (up to £300) worth a punt.

https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk

Probably not, at least yet.

The OP is actually looking for an amount in excess of £1000.
Also the initial charge is just to register the claim. The OP knows what the response will be - it'll be a defence as per the deadlock letter

Then it'll need to go to a hearing, which is where more court costs are incurred.

Court action should be considered as the last resort only. If not, even if the complainant wins, they may not be awarded their court costs.
e.g. failure to try the ombudsman initially for a resolution may have an adverse affect on the possibility of the OP getting their court costs back even if they win their claim (which is not guaranteed)

footyguy

snuff2pay wrote: »

No I have not included any dates where work was actually done. I am referring to three further appointments which SP made and then denied having made them. The property is not occupied during the week, hence the 150 mile round trip and the day's lost work.

So you (or someone) is there at the weekend anyway?

I would have asked for a weekend appointment in the first place, and insisted upon one if I had taken a day off work and travelled 150 miles total to go to and from an appointment that the supplier failed to attend.

Carrot007

So you are saying the 2 times that failed due to broken backboard you did not have any contact with the engineer? He just looked at the outside meter and left without talking to you?

I also assume now that is is not a change for an old meter but because they do not believe your usage? Which is probably because it is low because you are often not there!

All suppliers will offer 2 hour appointments and at least a sat morning appointment if pushed. However they tend not to as it costs more. And sometimes they will have issues with staff availability etc, partciulatly in Scotland. Which does ask the question is this SP's area. IE Southern Scotland? (and maybe is it remote?)

Anyhow you should have just said you can be there on a Saturday and they can take you to court if they don't like it. And of course go if they do that. They would not be looked upon favourably.

However I still think you will not get anywhere as they have techincally not forced you to be there. Just strongly asked.

Pincher

snuff2pay wrote: »

Thanks for that. It was the ombudsman who said I was time barred so I think I need to go back to them. Why is everything a battle!

You are thinking they carry a back board, tools to cut/shape the back board, and they get paid to fit the new backboard.

Sadly, you are lucky if they don't turn up with flat batteries for the drill, and not forget to charge them up before they remove the old meter.

[Deleted User]

The local DNO is responsible for upkeep of the backboard not the supplier and I would nt have thought that meter fitters ever get involved with refitting a new back board. Scottish Power may well use the excuse that the customer failed to inform them of the backboard fault and that is why they were slow to complete the work.
I have seen electric meters hanging off the boards quite a few times and one actually started a barn fire and burnt it down completely when the 3 phase meters separated from the back board, so a faulty backboard can be dangerous.
I don`t think suppliers like to initiate any civil court proceedings against anyone, no matter what the offence, it will be the customer who would start proceedings.
We have seen it on here when suppliers actually back down at the last minute on a small claims or civil court. The last thing they want is our "learned friends " getting involved in any complaints.

snuff2pay

Yes we spoke to the engineer. On the first occasion he said the backboard was not sufficiently secure to fit a meter and that someone would come to repair it. On the second occasion he said that it had been repaired and was now ready for a different team to fit the new meter.

With hindsight we should have said to SP that we intended to mitigate our losses at a very early stage. Instead, we believed them when they said that there had been a series of errors, equipment failure, breakdown of communication etc and that they were taking it very seriously and that ........ personally was escalating it to a high level and then an even higher level etc etc. Our bad.

I was obviously insufficiently insistent that the tariff rather than the meter was changed. Our bad.

I was equally insufficiently insistent that they attend at weekend when they flatly refused. Our bad.

It is quite a remote property. Our bad.

Perhaps I simply need to write to SP to thank them for all the time they have spent trying to deal with my issues and ask whether I owe them any money to cover their time and trouble as it would appear from some respondents that I have brought this situation on myself !

And honestly footy guy I have no idea what the ombudsman is talking about. I made it very clear that I had just received a deadlock letter ( and supplied them with a copy) and would like them to initiate an investigation.

Do you reckon I owe them an apology as well!

footyguy

snuff2pay wrote: »

...
And honestly footy guy I have no idea what the ombudsman is talking about. ...

Probably best to ask them to clarify, then

Let us know what their response is