Scottish Power or Iresa?

System

Cardew wrote: »

Welcome to the forum.

If you were billed for an Imperial meter, yet have a metric meter, the case should be 'cut and dried', So for what reason has it gone to the Ombudsman?

Cardew is correct, as a meter reader I find this happening with different suppliers occasionally .It is something where there can be no arguments about it, readily proved and it would nt go to the Ombudsman. If it did the supplier would be heavily fined. Dates of the mess up can be easily traced. It usually happens on a switch or when the meter is exchanged.Dates on the metric meter are on the yellow sticky label. On the other hand there are meter mess ups where a customer has an imperial meter and is billed at metric rates, 2.8 times less..They do not complain about the reduced bills however and I don t think they have to repay the error

Raxiel

I had a co-worker who had a leaking meter replaced by Scottish Power a few years back, the replacement was reconditioned and had a much higher reading. The tech who swapped it correctly recorded the previous and new readings (both on his paperwork and the card attached to the meter).

Scottish Power's billing system managed to loose that little detail and billed them for the difference, I don't remember the exact figure but it was well over £1k (the kind of consumption that, occurring in a single billing period should raise warning flags) and increased the DD significantly to cover it.

It was quite some time before my co-worker realised something was wrong (I wish I could afford to not notice I was being over charged by a couple of hundred quid a month for several months but I digress).

They complained, Scottish power looked at the meter change records and agreed there was a problem but didn't refund the balance, computer says no. They complained to the Ombudsman who agreed it was a clear cut case and also instructed SP to return the balance. Even with them and the ombudsman chasing SP several times it took over a year to get their money back.

I know all suppliers have issues, but given what I've heard about SP I have no problem believing that something as cut and dried as billing in the wrong unit might require regulatory intervention.

dogshome

As already said, this problem is cut & dried, and there is no *reason why it
should not be quickly fixed.
*Other than SP followed n'power down the route of a flawed software update, and as with n'power don't know if they are on foot or horseback

The reason this Metric/Imperial meter mix-up happened, is that some while ago the old Imperial meter was changed for a Metric model, but the paper trail wasn't completed and the National Data Base for gas meters were not informed, so their register still says you have an Imperial meter.

However 10 months is way beyond the norm for SP to sort this out, and with SP not fullfilling their responsibility even after an Ombudsman decision it's time to get Ofgem involved ( Ofgem do not deal with customer complaints, but can and do crack the whip on occasions, and this is one of those occasions)

WRITE to Ofgem (With a copy to SP) setting out the history of this problem,
asking them what you are supposed to do to recover all the money you have over paid