Scottish Power Dirty Tricks?

Zsoltmeister

I was talking to Scottish Power on their chat function a few days ago querying a bill. I have since had the bill reduced.

Several times, I asked the person I was speaking to if I would get a copy of the transcript. She was evasive, so I pressed CTRL+S to save the page, and the screen froze with an error message. I lost the chat.

Curious, I tried to start another chat the next day and as soon as it started, tried to save the page, and it again immediately froze and showed the same error message. I've just tried it with their bot, and that does the same thing.

Has anyone else noticed this? I think Scottish Power have hidden in their site's Javascript a function to prevent you saving their chat. Could be useful for them if you ever go to court to query a bill, and don't have the chats as evidence...

victor2

With any online chat, I always highlight the entire conversation before ending it and copy and paste it into a document to keep an offline record of it.

MattMattMattUK

You are better off printing to PDF. 

In regard to your question though, no, they will not have included coding that freezes/crashes the page if one tries to save it, that would be deemed malicious code.

Zsoltmeister

victor2 said:

With any online chat, I always highlight the entire conversation before ending it and copy and paste it into a document to keep an offline record of it.

I'll try this next time, or printing as has been suggested elsewhere.

Zsoltmeister

MattMattMattUK said:

You are better off printing to PDF. 

In regard to your question though, no, they will not have included coding that freezes/crashes the page if one tries to save it, that would be deemed malicious code.

One would like to believe an energy company would only behave ethically, experience shows that's not always the case. I'm curious if anyone else can replicate what I have found. It's been instant every time I've tried.

victor2

Zsoltmeister said:

MattMattMattUK said:

You are better off printing to PDF. 

In regard to your question though, no, they will not have included coding that freezes/crashes the page if one tries to save it, that would be deemed malicious code.

One would like to believe an energy company would only behave ethically, experience shows that's not always the case. I'm curious if anyone else can replicate what I have found. It's been instant every time I've tried.

Saving a webpage doesn't work well, especially when there are popup windows such as chat boxes in it.Probably not deliberate on SP's part, but equally not something they'll bother to address. Do they give an option to email that conversation to you when finished? Some systems do, but getting your own copy on your computer is far better. Makes it easy to quote back things they have said in the past, in subsequent conversations. Been there, done that!

rhedyn

I agree with those who have said it is much more likely to be fragility rather than on purpose.  I recommend taking screen shots throughout the chat in order to keep a record, it's quicker and doesn't rely on browser functionality so is much less fragile.  You can collate and organise the screen shots afterward.

Raxiel

I suspect Hanlons Razor applies here, and in a lot of what Scottish Power do.

That said, In Windows 10, Windows key + shift + S will let you draw a box around part of the screen and opens the image in the clipping tool, convenient for saving. Not as searchable as actually saving the text, but unlikely to upset any peculiar web apps.

molerat

Interestingly on Santander chat there is the option to print the chat transcript.