The Epic Tale of the Scottish Power Debacle

Marabak

Hi. Been a long time since I have posted on this board, but I am after some advice regarding our ongoing debacle with Scottish Power. My partner has had the unfortunate honour of being the person most involved in this, but as I have the account on this forum, I am posting our story.

We originally moved in together last June (2015), me from an NPower household and my partner from her parents house, and the flat we moved into was already set up with Scottish Power, so we decided to continue with them. We had issues straight away from the start, with SP claiming that there were two meters in the property, despite our insistence and their own meter reader's findings. This was eventually sorted out, but things just never worked well since.

Since then, we have really struggled to get a bill off them. My partner is a lot more concerned about this sort of thing than I am, particularly about being hit with a huge bill and the effect on credit ratings, so she has chased and chased them for well over a year, making a one off payment around this time last year and even managing to get a direct debit set up at one point, which lasted 4 months before SP inexplicably cancelled it. In all of this time, we never received a single bill. At one point, my partner got the ombudsman involved, which was supposed to sort it out and give us a £150 discount on the bill. However, this didn't make a jot of difference.

After more chasing, a direct debit was supposed to have set up again, due to go out the beginning of December, which didn't. My partner chased up SP again, only to be told that our bill had gone to the Debt Collecting department!! Despite never being billed, and voluntarily making payments ourselves. This obviously concerned us quite a lot. My partner got in touch with the ombudsman again, who discovered that we had had our tariff changed (unbeknown to us). The ombudsman switched our tariff back (I was surprised how much power and access to SP's records they had) and recalculated our bill and what we owed, with the suggestion of a payment plan. This is copied below.

I refer to our conversation today regarding the balance on your account. Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience this matter has caused.
I have re-instated your original Help Beat Cancer Fixed Jan 2018 Online product back to 24 February 2016 and rebilled your account. The rebilling of your account has reduced the debit balance from £812.24 to £795.53.
Based on the new debit balance of £795.53 for charges to the meter reading you kindly provided today of 13561 I have set up a separate payment plan over 5 years.
The first payment due on 4 January 2017 will be £28.53 followed by 59 payments of £13.00 commencing on 4 February 2016. These payments total the debit balance of £795.53.
In relation to your ongoing consumption I have set the monthly payment to £90.00 commencing on 4 January 2017. This payment amount will be regularly reviewed in line with your ongoing usage and balance. However, the monthly payment amount for the debit balance over 5 years is fixed and will not change.
To clarify, your payment on 5 January 2017 will be £118.53 made up of £28.53 payment plan and £90.00 towards ongoing consumption. Your payment on 4 February 2017 will be £103.00 made up of £13.00 payment plan and £90.00 towards ongoing consumption.
I trust this fully resolves the matter for you.

This seemed reasonable, albeit it a little high (our flat is rented and not very energy efficient, tumble dryer, electric heaters etc.). However, on the day we received that email, we also received a bill from SP outlining what we owed. There is no point reiterating the information, so I've copied my reply to ombudsman listed below.

Thank you for your email with regards to our ongoing issues with billing by Scottish Power. We are happy with the payment plan. I have a couple of queries however.
Firstly, do we qualify under the Back-Billing Principle with regards to being billed for energy consumption greater than 12 months ago? We appear to qualify for several of the criteria listed on the uswitch website on this topic (link: https://www.uswitch.com/gas-electricity/guides/energy-back-billing/), and I would like some clarification on this issue.
Secondly, after our communication we received several bills through the post, dated as printed by Scottish Power on the 15th December 2016. We have several queries about these bills. Sometimes they overlap in dates, and there are some cancelled charges. The dates go back to when we first set up the account with Scottish Power. I have outline the main details below. It contains the billed start and end dates, the starting amount, any cancelled amounts, the new additions and the new final total.
(apologies for the table formatting, I can't seem to get it to behave)

Start Date_ End Date_ Start Amount_ Cancelled_ Meter_ Final
20/06/2015_ 24/06/2015 _ 689.91_ 1271.91_ 8.56_ 227.56
20/06/2015_ 23/02/2016_ 227.56_ 8.56_ 771.99_ 990.99
24/02/2016_ 24/05/2016_ 990.99_ 0_ 215.03_ 1206.02
25/05/2016_ 26/05/2016_ 1206.02_ 0_ 2.69_ 1208.71
27/05/2016_ 29/07/2016_ 1208.71_ 0_ 83.14_ 1296.01

During our time with Scottish Power, we have made a single Card Purchase payment of £180 on the 8/9/2015, as well as four direct debit amounts from the start of the months February to May 2016 of £60 each, totalling £420 payment. We have this information contained in bank statements and have confirmed that the account number and references match. Additionally, previous communications with the Ombudsman over the same matter resulted in a £150 discount. None of this information is presented anywhere in the bills.
We are unsure why the start amount is £689.91 when we were new customers. The cancelled charge is also a mystery to us, and the maths for the final bill does not add up. From this point on however, it appears to be reasonably accurate and based on our meter readings is probably correct.
A new additional bill also arrived this morning (Printed 16/12/16) to cloud the matter. In summary it states:

Start Date End Date Start Amount Cancelled Meter Final
25/05/2016 17/11/2016 1296.01 89.99 284.89 689.91

This new bill overlaps with the dates from the last entry in the above table. However, this is probably covered by the cancelled portion of the new bill. This new bill doesn’t contain any information with regards to why the final balance has decreased from £1296.01 to £689.91 and the maths doesn’t add up to suggest that the payments and discount have been recognised. Additionally, this final amount is different from the £812.24 or £795.53 quoted as our debit balance in your last email. More clarification on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

The dates printed on the bills suggest they were sent out prior to the ombudsman's involvement, possibly as part of the debt collection department's role?

I was wondering if anyone has any advice for us, maybe whether we qualify for back billing or a way just to get SP behave like a normal business and bill us accurately for the services we use.

Cheers for reading the EPIC tale.