Huge Scottish power bill

Littlefish23

Hi All,

My situation is a bit complicated but I'll try my best to be as succinct as possible.

When me and my current wife moved into our current (1st) house in 2012 we switched out gas and electric to scottish power and fixed for 2 years paying by direct debit each month. After the 2 years was up I did a comparison and switched to another provider. I then got a phone call from scottish power offering a better deal so quickly changed back as it was in the cool off period (this is June 2014 now) everything is set up and we continue as normal.

Now this morning I get both a bill and an email stating we need to make a payment of over £3000! Obviously this fills me with panic but think it surely must be a con artist trying to take money off us as we haven't had a paper or email bill since 2014.

I log onto my online account with them and to my horror it says the same thing on there. So after doing some digging around I've worked out whats happened. whoever has set the account up has set up seperate gas and electricity accounts and put the electricity as a direct debit and the gas as a cash pay quarterly?!?!

The direct debit has been coming out for the electricity but not for the gas. I had no idea this was the case until I got the bill today. I'm really confused why it was set up wrong and also why 3 years in this is the first bill that I've had.

I'm really starting to panic now because we don't have £3000 just lying around to be able to pay the bill and I'm unsure what to do. I've just rang them and they were really unhelpful and just wanted a meter reading to make sure it was accurate and told me to take another one next week and call back.

Any advise would be greatly appreciated and I hope that all makes sense.

Thanks all!

dogshome

Are you saying that since the Switch Away/Switch Back to SP, (2014?), you have not been issued with any bills for gas until now?

If this is the case the Back Billing Agreement comes into play, which means that SP can't demand payment for any gas used prior to the previous 12 months, and that 12 months runs back from the date they did manage to produce a bill.
You WRITE a letter to SP headed Complaint pointing out they have failed to produce any bills for xxxxxx months, and that you claim relief under the 'Back Billing Agreement' on all charges for Gas consumed prior to xxxxx date, which is one year earlier to the day, of the bill now issued

molerat

The back billing code does put some onus on the customer to have at least made some attempt to get a bill.

Cardew

£3,000 for gas only(on a good deal) is very high for under 3 years.

I log onto my online account with them and to my horror it says the same thing on there.

Had you not logged on in the previous 3 years and seen you were not paying for gas?

Have you been getting regular bills(on-line or paper) for electricity?

Littlefish23

Cardew wrote: »

£3,000 for gas only(on a good deal) is very high for under 3 years.



Had you not logged on in the previous 3 years and seen you were not paying for gas?

Have you been getting regular bills(on-line or paper) for electricity?

No I hadn't checked the payments which I know is partly my responsibly, because our electricity was done by direct debit I received emails saying my direct debits had been changed due to spend etc but not specific bills. They are on the site after you dig around a bit but I haven't had them on paper or via email or even a reminder to pay my bill. Naive I know, but i just thought the direct debits were coming out and if there were any problems scottish power would let me know.

They have over charged because it's an estimated reading its closer to £2500