A Scottish Power switch horror story

Lectos

Hi everyone,

Just wanted some advice on how to deal with the following situation. Would really appreciate some help as I am quite frustrated by this point. I'll try to keep it short, but this has been going on for the past 6 months and is yet to be resolved.

The story:

April 2019
I changed (rented) flats and started looking into switching energy supplier. While looking into this I found out that I have one of this annoying Scottish Power White Control Meter. So effectively I have 3 different tariffs (day, night, control for storage heaters) and 2 supply points (2 MPAN numbers) going to a single physical meter (this is important later).

I ended up deciding to switch to Bub after looking into options, comparing tariffs and calling suppliers to see if they would take me on with this meter. Bulb assured me that they would support my storage heaters and the dual supply point. I waited for the switch to happen.

May 2019
By early-May the switch came through, turns out that only 1 of the 2 MPAN supply points switched. So now, I am with Bulb and Scottish Power at the same time in a single physical meter with Scottish power supplying my day/night and Bulb my storage heaters tariff. I spent the rest of the month calling Bulb and SP. Bulb tried to switch the remaining MPAN two (or three?) more times. All the times Bulb said that SP had objected the switch, they even provided some evidence (screen capture of their system). At all times SP denied objecting the switch. Ended up submitting a complain via Resolver (resolver. co. uk - I cannot post links).

June-July 2019
Nothing much changed. I called SP several times. Case handler assigned to my case was on annual leave. By end of June I managed to contact her and it still took several more calls over the following weeks to make her acknowledge that there was a problem. I always got the "we are not objecting anything" and then "there is something going on, but we don't know what". By mid-July I was told that the case was being escalated within SP and that it should be resolved "soon".

August 2019 - till now
I have been having very sporadic calls (every 3-6 weeks). Only to get the same "we are working on it, should be resolved 'soon' ".

Some additional stuff
Honestly, during the past 2-3 months I got tired of calling them and just waited for their calls. Now I am started to get a bit worried. Until now, they (SP) has not charged me anything. I do not want to be hit suddenly by a very high bill. I have mentioned this to them over the phone, but they have not been very straightforward with their answer. I have just been told that "we'll work things out so you (the customer) does not end up being worse off as this is not your mistake". There was some mention about compensation also. I would be happy to pay them whatever I would have paid to Bulb minus some compensation for the time I have put into this and hassle that it has been. I just don't want to pay Scottish Power’s overpriced rates.

So I guess the questions are:

• Should I scale this up to the Ombudsman?
• Is the Ombudsman going to be any helpful? or is he/she even going to care as I have not been made worse off (yet)?
• Any other way to expedite the process?
• Anything else I should look into or worry about?

Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance for any help

Gerry1

1. Communicate only in writing, so that you have an audit trail.

2. Submit a formal complaint asking for a deadlock letter by return.

3. Go to the Ombudsman when you receive your deadlock letter, or after after eight weeks if they don't send you one.

Lectos

Thanks for the reply Gerry.

Guess I forgot to mention that the complain via Resolver (resolver. co. uk) was a formal complaint. Apparently SP use it to keep track.

Anyways, at the beginning of August I got a letter from SP. It went along the lines that: they are still trying to resolve my complaint and that eight weeks had passed since the initial complaint and that I could progress this independently (refering me to the back of the letter which had the Ombudsman contact details). Is this considered the deadlock letter? The letter does not say that they cannot help further.

Gerry1

Go to the Ombudsman now, it's already taken far too long, and there's nothing to lose. Just make sure you're squeaky clean with regards to your DD, e.g. make sure it's shown on your bank account as having been set up.

The backstop is that they can't bill your for energy used more than 12 months ago (provided that it's their fault, which seems to be the case), so you could benefit if it keeps dragging on. But obviously it's better if it all gets speedily resolved.