SSE insisting my deaf uncle phones them before they resolve complaint

PennineAcute

wild666 said:

kerryburnetty said:

Can a utility company insist a complaint is made via a phone call?

Please forgive long explanation.
My 89 year old, disabled uncle received a final bill from SSE when he moved out. However, he used pay as you go card meters, which he insists were in credit and I understand you can't run up debt on anyway. The final bills came to around £70.
He phoned, but is very very hard of hearing and gets anxious and confused as a result. He thinks he was told he did not owe money and account closed. He did actually get a letter with words to this effect. They then sent further red bills demanding different, higher amounts for gas and electric. My uncle thought they must be a mistake so ignored. When I checked  the letter about account closure, it was only for electric and had wrong account number on.
Then he got a bill for £111 from a debt collection company. He was very upset, near panic.
I've contacted the debt company to put debt collection on hold.
I tried to phone SSE but got cut off 3 times after explaining complaint to several departments.
Wrote to complain, with written, signed authorisation letter from uncle for them to deal with me.
I asked them to investigate matter and reply by post.
They have today written rejecting the authorisation, insisting the matter must be dealt with by my uncle phoning them to vocally give authorisation. My uncle is deaf and very anxious. I find it hard to hear on phone also and don't have hours to get passed around departments only to be cut off. Also, we were both unsuccessful trying to get this resolved by phone before, so have no faith in that process.
Can I now write again and insist the complaint is dealt with in writing?

The only debt a person can be on with pre-payment meters is the emergency credit they put on if the credit on the meter runs out. That's what it was like when I had pre-payment meters back in 2011, it was about £5. I don't know how much emergency credit they allow now but at todays rates the £5 would be about enough for two day at the most.

Not necessarily true, although this is with non smart prepay meters.

When there is a tariff change this is done by the key when the key is next topped up.  If there is a period of time between a tariff change and top up, then this can cause a hidden credit/debit to appear on the account, depending on a positive/negative change.  And as someone else has also mentioned, if you tariff has a SC, this can also run up a debt if the account is not topped up.  Although, this is normally when the power has gone off and not topped up for a while (Usually gas in the summer).

Smart meters have stopped latter problem.

booshya

kerryburnetty said:

Can a utility company insist a complaint is made via a phone call?

Please forgive long explanation.
My 89 year old, disabled uncle received a final bill from SSE when he moved out. However, he used pay as you go card meters, which he insists were in credit and I understand you can't run up debt on anyway. The final bills came to around £70.
He phoned, but is very very hard of hearing and gets anxious and confused as a result. He thinks he was told he did not owe money and account closed. He did actually get a letter with words to this effect. They then sent further red bills demanding different, higher amounts for gas and electric. My uncle thought they must be a mistake so ignored. When I checked  the letter about account closure, it was only for electric and had wrong account number on.
Then he got a bill for £111 from a debt collection company. He was very upset, near panic.
I've contacted the debt company to put debt collection on hold.
I tried to phone SSE but got cut off 3 times after explaining complaint to several departments.
Wrote to complain, with written, signed authorisation letter from uncle for them to deal with me.
I asked them to investigate matter and reply by post.
They have today written rejecting the authorisation, insisting the matter must be dealt with by my uncle phoning them to vocally give authorisation. My uncle is deaf and very anxious. I find it hard to hear on phone also and don't have hours to get passed around departments only to be cut off. Also, we were both unsuccessful trying to get this resolved by phone before, so have no faith in that process.
Can I now write again and insist the complaint is dealt with in writing?

Why doesn't your uncle send a letter of complaint over the original matter?
You can even draft the letter for him

kerryburnetty

UPDATE
So thank you all for your help.
I emailed the CEO explaining issues and... funnily enough, it was all resolved within hours. My uncle is very relieved.
I do worry about all those vulnerable people out there like him that have no one to fight their corner.

Sandtree

Rodders53 said:

Use UK Relay https://www.relayuk.bt.com/ to speak his written text words to SSE and relay SSEs back to him as text?

As far as I know its free to use.

It is free to use and naturally very open to abuse as you can use text in both directions and as such no one ever hears if its a 88 year old man or a 30 year old woman on the phone so no need to even attempt to get someone with the right sounding voice.

Having been on the receiving end of these calls its very hard to get yourself into the mindset, you should speak to the agent as if you are speaking to the customer but its too easy to slip into "can you ask them if..." the BT agents get very stroppy with you very quickly. 

It is live text too so the agent sees what you type as you type it so no hiding bad spelling or chance to restructure how you want to say something after you start.

username

kerryburnetty said:

UPDATE
So thank you all for your help.
I emailed the CEO explaining issues and... funnily enough, it was all resolved within hours. My uncle is very relieved.
I do worry about all those vulnerable people out there like him that have no one to fight their corner.

I'm glad you finally got it sorted.

And if you're wondering what happened to the post, I got shot down by someone on this forum for trying to help them!

Anyway, I would always recommend communicating to the management of a company via written means if you get no luck from the base levels.

Otherwise you'll still have been stuck in seven circle of call-centre hell, hanging on the telephone and continually having to repeat your scenario to someone who can't deviate from the script, and use some common sense or initiative to sort the problem.