Scottish Power - unreasonable bill dispute - advice needed!

Petriix

Robin9 said:

Why do posters, like the OP, who were seriously concerned/worried/panicking only a few hours ago and get lots of constructive comments/questions/advice within minutes not make any responses?

I suspect that in most cases the OP is also scouring the Internet for information and suddenly has an epiphany about how it all works. Realising that they seemed ignorant the easiest way to respond is to hide away.

The alternative would be to come back and post something along the lines of "I get it now, they weren't scamming me, everything is fine now". I don't recall anyone on the Internet ever admitting fault.

theoretica

Or can't find where the forum has hidden the answers.

martygraffin68

Robin9 said:

Why do posters, like the OP, who were seriously concerned/worried/panicking only a few hours ago and get lots of constructive comments/questions/advice within minutes not make any responses?

Sorry for the late reply, just checked back to this. I do appreciate all the comments given.

The latest meter readings were provided to SP in July this year, and the high bill is based on that. However this does mean that they have 2 meter readings a year apart. Hoping because of this, in relation to the point you made earlier, that this will be sufficient for them, even if it takes processing a complaint to acknowledge it.

martygraffin68

Robin9 said:

I see you've been with SP since 2017 - have you been switching tariffs regularly ? If not you will on a standard (ie expensive tariff)

What about the gas - have you built up  a debt there?

This is a good case for separate suppliers - not only generally cheaper but easier for you to check the DD's and the bills.

No debt on gas, which is strange because if they're going to estimate our electricity, you would think they would estimate the gas as well and that would be extortionate too, but that seems in line with standard usage.

Robin9

Please give us the meter readings - to have a debt of £1850 in 12 months you must have been using about 12000 kWh - norm for your flat about 3000 kWh.  This suggests a wrong reading

Edit - take great care when reading meters  - there is a decimal point  which is easily missed.

martygraffin68

Robin9 said:

Please give us the meter readings - to have a debt of £1850 in 12 months you must have been using about 12000 kWh - norm for your flat about 3000 kWh.  This suggests a wrong reading

Edit - take great care when reading meters  - there is a decimal point  which is easily missed.

Thank you. The read from July 2020 was 79020.

Frustratingly I don’t have the meter read from July 2019 as SP have informed me that they have it on file when I spoke to them, suggesting I gave it over the phone to them at the time, however because the bills seem to only go back so far on the SP account area I can’t see it there (the relevant bill is not available going up to July 2019), and I don’t have a photo of the read. When (if?!) they call me back on Wednesday re the complaint I will try and get it from them to find out what it was. I appreciate there’s little you can do with this.

I downloaded graphs of all our historic usage from the SP account area and the graphs for 2019 / 2020 looks like the attached (basically there is a spike over Apr, May, Jun 2020 which seems completely atypical). They charged us £70.75 for electricity in Jul 2019.

Thank you again for taking the time to read all this.

Robin9

Unless you switched the hot tub on this sounds like a meter issue - possibly a rogue meter.

One thought are your meters ones with a small key pad on it ?   There was a thread recently where the wrong button had been pressed.

martygraffin68

Robin9 said:

Unless you switched the hot tub on this sounds like a meter issue - possibly a rogue meter.

One thought are your meters ones with a small key pad on it ?   There was a thread recently where the wrong button had been pressed.

Hi Robin9, thanks for replying.
Yeah this is what i'm starting to think re meter fault - I've called SP and retrieved the meter readings from the opening of the acc, and they read as follows:

12 July 2017 – 61873

10 Aug 2017 – 62085

11 Jul 2018 – 64594

9 Oct 2018 – 65008

6 Jan 2019 – 65688

6 Apr 2019 – 66282

3 July 2019 – 66619

=====================

NO READINGS RECEIVE FOR A YEAR, DESPITE SUBMITTING THEM ON SITE

=====================

11 July 2020 – 79020

27 July 2020 – 79134

So i think the next step is getting the meter looked at as I think this might be the source of the issue, although I know that's meant to be a pretty rare occurrence?

Our meter is a standard dial / clock meter, so I'm not sure if it may be old / defective.

I'm also not sure whether a reading of 79134 is completely irregular for a 2 bed flat, and it shouldn't be reading this much? If so that's more indication that the meter is reading too high.

Would you recommend trying to test it by turning everything off to see if it's still going round when the power is completely off?

Thank you again

Robin9

When you say clock/dial  - one of those with dials for 10,000 , 1,000  etc some go clockwise, some anticlockwise ?

Can you give us a photo please ?

martygraffin68

Robin9 said:

When you say clock/dial  - one of those with dials for 10,000 , 1,000  etc some go clockwise, some anticlockwise ?

Can you give us a photo please ?

Yeah one of those ones, it's probably as old as the flats...1992. Ran the creep test and the disc in the meter went v slowly for 5 mins and then stopped, so I don't think it's logging excessively. 

Attached are meter readings from June, and 2 from July, all dated. I still think our meter could be the problem so I'm willing to get an engineer to check it out.

Thanks again Robin9, much appreciated