Major issues with Scottish Power

lisamc66

Hi Folks,
I am looking for some much needed help please. My mother is a customer with Scottish Power and has had two years of ongoing problems. Complaint after complaint with them seems to go nowhere. Tried the ombudsman but they didn't do much either.

A couple of years ago my mum received a statement advising she was £900 in credit and that they would send her a cheque for £800 (so as to keep her account in credit.) Mum then was on holiday for two weeks, though she was coming home to a juicy cheque for £800 and came home to nothing. When she contacted Scottish Power their answer was "we made a mistake, your meter was faulty it needs replaced." Fair enough.

However, it happened again a year later, this time for £1000, so a cheque for £900. Again it was at holiday times when the cash would have come in extremely handy. Same thing happened, "mistake again, new meter needed."

So my poor wee mum who by this point is a pensioner is getting stressed and upset with all the hassle with Scottish Power. Then a year and a half go by and she realises she hasn't had a bill from them at all. After contacting them discovers that THEY cancelled her direct debit without telling her and are now demanding £2000 payment immediately. The saga goes on and on. Eventually, to get rid of them, my mum called 3 weeks ago and paid £2300 to get them off her back. The plan being to get a switch to another provider. On Friday she received a final demand for £53. Not a bill, not a request, a demand. Once again a complaint has been filed.

Can anyone at all please help me to help her? Is there anyone we can go to who could fight the case on her behalf? They have breached DPA on several occasions, speaking to me without doing any security checks with either myself or mum, constantly fobbing her off and constantly getting it wrong. Surely someone must be able to take responsibility there. She's very upset and stressed by it all.

Thanks.

phillw

First of all you need to make sure that you have all the bills & that they are correct. They must provide you with these, if they haven't already. That is your starting point for how much money you owe.

Then you need to decide what it is you want help for. If dealing with them is too stressful for you then the best option is to pay them, leave & move on.

Poor customer service is worth £10-£30 at the ombudsman, you could push Scottish Power for a bit more to avoid it. You could try to get them to reduce the bill for energy used more than 12 months ago if it was their fault, although that would require a pretty focused negotiation because you've already paid it. The DPA violation hasn't inconvenienced you, so forget about complaining about that or they'll shut off and you'll get nowhere. The same for being fobbed off & the large credit bills that were a mistake. Those are the type of things that you can throw in at the end once they've admitted they are in the wrong.

When you're complaining you need to make it easy for them to help you & you need to make them want to help you.

imho

They stopped our DD for both Gas and Electric and after so many phone calls over 18 months to SP I filled in the Ombudsman form and sent it off.
I ended up getting £1.500 off the bill for the gas I had used and I think £75 from SP.
Ombudsman told me my electric should have been free as well as they had stopped that DD on that as well but I was so relieved it had been sorted out I couldn't be bothered to fight for the electric bill as well.

It all started when they changed the software they use.

Forgot to say they wanted me to pay my bill but I said no way as could see that would get lost in the system so that's when I contacted Ombudsman.

Scottish_Power

Hi lisamc66,

I am so sorry for the problems that you have been having . I would like to get this resolved for you as a matter of urgency. Can you please forward on your mother's account number, full address and your current contact telephone number to our [EMAIL="social@scottishpower.com"]social@scottishpower.com[/EMAIL] mailbox and we will be in touch as soon as we possibly can to resolve this issue for you.

Kind Regards

Ross

jil43

My story is not encouraging but in my experience SP are the worst they put me through 2.5 years of stress to the point I had heart palpitations when talking on the phone to them! It did not matter who I spoke to and most were very reasonable people and sympathised with my situation. The staff all promised to sort things out but nothing ever happened. Even after I went to Ombudsman SP still had sorted things out and this went on for another 6months. Then somehow I managed to get hold of someone at SP who did manage to close my account and I have not heard from them for about 5 months. I think things are finally sorted, so sorry this was sheer hell for me and I did have to keep plugging away - so don't give up but be prepared for just how rubbish SP are!