Moving Home - beware

Martin839 · 23 October 2019 at 4:09PM

I am financially savvy, but I got caught out when I recently moved home. I was a dual fuel customer of Scottish Power and told them in advance I was moving and wanted to remain a customer. They failed to tell me the process and when I rang up with my starting meter readings for my new home I was informed that I would be treated as a new customer switching to them. As the previous owners used SSE I was now an SSE customer on their standard rate for at least 3 weeks before I could rejoin Scottish Power. To add insult to injury they said I could not resume on my old tariff as it was no longer offered to new customers! I have an outstanding complaint with them about this. I liken it to BT telling me I could continue as a broadband customer after I moved, except I would have to sign up to Talk Talk/Plusnet etc for 3 weeks before reverting to BT, but at higher prices! Of course BT don't do this and in fact I got a good deal out of them when I moved,
These arcane rules were unknown to me and do not seem to be widely publicised. If you are moving and want to stay with your existing energy supplier you need to talk to them well in advance and find out which company supplies the energy for the property you are buying. Even if it is the same as your own provider you may have to go through the switch process. I would like MSE to publicise this trap.

Talldave · 23 October 2019 at 4:15PM

It's not so much a trap as the way it works.

Heaven forbid that gas & electricity would ever be handled in the same way as phone line/broadband. No service when you move in and two weeks before anyone can visit to "enable" a phone line and get a router going.

Martin839 · 23 October 2019 at 4:22PM

It's the price increase that really bugs me and the fact that the process is not well known. I for one think the whole process is customer unfriendly and imposes unnecessary costs on the industry. SSE had to set me up with an account, write to me and then shut it all down after 3 weeks. Like Smart Meters it all goes into the bottom line and we pay.
Maybe I was lucky with my phone line but it was enabled within 24 hours of moving in and once my new router arrived it was easy to install and get broadband up and running.