Scottish Power will not return almost £3000 credit

born_again

Has anyone been reading the meter & supplying SP with them?
In reality you should have left the DD in place as that is the method of refund used. 

But why given a empty house had you not thought to reduce the DD with them when your mother went into the home & check the last bills? Which would at that point have highlighted a large credit already, given the mention of a £2000 credit at the start of the year.
Sadly LPA has not worked very well.

icscv15

FAO matt_drummer: Genuine question: Do you work for Scottish Power or hold shares in them ? All of the relevant information was in my original post. I'm not going to waste my time repeating it. I'm too busy chasing Scottish Power.

If anyone else has had problems getting their credit back from Scottish Power. Thinking of trying to organise some sort of class action against them.

TheMilkmansDad

icscv15 said:

FAO matt_drummer: Genuine question: Do you work for Scottish Power or hold shares in them ? All of the relevant information was in my original post. I'm not going to waste my time repeating it. I'm too busy chasing Scottish Power.

If anyone else has had problems getting their credit back from Scottish Power. Thinking of trying to organise some sort of class action against them.

Fairly sure they don't work for SP (and neither do I).

Read you opening email and at no point does it mention anything about accuracy of bills which is the 1st point of call before requesting refunds. So, the last bill you had, was it based on estimates or actual reads?

Yes ,SP's customer services are poor (as many people can probably confirm!) and this hasn't been handled well. Once you've resolved the issue, raise an official complaint and go to the ombudsman if unsatisfactory response.

Bit early for "Class Action"!

matt_drummer

icscv15 said:

FAO matt_drummer: Genuine question: Do you work for Scottish Power or hold shares in them ? All of the relevant information was in my original post. I'm not going to waste my time repeating it. I'm too busy chasing Scottish Power.

If anyone else has had problems getting their credit back from Scottish Power. Thinking of trying to organise some sort of class action against them.

No, I work as an accountant for a timber importer in Ipswich.

I don't have shares in any companies.

I understand how things work and no large company is going to just send large refunds based on emails and telephone calls without checking that the refund requested is correct.

No large company has staff sitting around poised, ready and waiting to investigate cases like these. They will have a team of people and ensure they have a back log of work so that the team always has something to do. They do this to reduce administration costs and keep bills as low as possible.

You will get your refund in due course if it is actually due, SP won't keep your money, no large businesses work like this.

You may be angry and frustrated but that is not my fault.

You posted on a public forum looking for replies about your circumstances.

Sorry you don't like mine.

EssexHebridean

For clarification - anyone posting on MSE as an industry representative have to state as much in their signatures - you can see this fro:the official Land Registry account here as an example, and also the information that mortgage brokers posting here have to give, 

I wouldn’t waste time trying to put together a “class action” - that is a US thing.

The risk when posting for advice with a problem on a public internet forum is that people with a bit of knowledge on the subject st hand will give you advice that you don’t really want to hear - that doesn’t make it wrong, or indeed mean that person is some kind of industry shill. It can mean that the person posting is wrong, or that they have misunderstood how the system works, or that they are going about things the wrong way. 

Petriix

It's not going to help the OP but this is exactly why you should never cancel the direct debit. The correct thing to do is get them to reduce it to zero or maybe just £1 while you work out what's going on. With the DD still in place they can easily make the refund. By cancelling it you shoot yourself in the foot. 

Gerry1

I'm no fan of Scottish Power but I can think of two good reasons why it's more difficult to send a cheque refund.

• GDPR laws state that personal info should not be retained for longer than necessary.  Deleting the bank details immediately after a DD has been cancelled is the simplest way to ensure full compliance.

• Strict checks need to be made before a cheque refund is authorised: there's a risk of fraud by a dishonest employee, a dishonest customer or by a hacker.  This could take quite a while to be detected, making it difficult or impossible to recover the funds.

Swipe

Petriix said:

It's not going to help the OP but this is exactly why you should never cancel the direct debit. The correct thing to do is get them to reduce it to zero or maybe just £1 while you work out what's going on. With the DD still in place they can easily make the refund. By cancelling it you shoot yourself in the foot. 

I once asked EDF to reduce my DD to zero a couple of weeks before my switch date and they started charging me the higher rate, so probably better to set it to £1 instead.

EssexHebridean

This does rely on the supplier being willing to do that, though - I can imagine that a lot would refuse. 

mac.d

Scottish Power's customer service is poor but there seems a lot of outrage here that doesn't really match up to the facts. You should try not to feel aggrieved about the refund cheque carry-on as it's partly your own fault and it's possible there may be questions on how much should be refunded while the account is still live (until the house is sold), and you should save your ire for dealing with their customer service on that! 

The fact is you've made it more difficult to get a refund by cancelling the direct debit. It's standard practice when you switch suppliers that you are advised to leave the DD in place so you can get any credit refunded. As others have said, leaving the DD in place and setting it as low as possible would have been the best option.

matt_drummer and TheMilkmansDad have raised some sensible questions, don't just dismiss them because you're aggrieved with Scottish Power. You should certainly get some of the credit refunded asap, and it'd be a good idea for you to just set up a DD for £1 for the account to enable this to happen quickly. Also, if you haven't already done so, give them up to date meter readings so they can easily check the amount you want refunded is reasonable. Good luck with getting it sorted.

thebullsback said:

Dreadful company to get money back from SP are truly Canny Scots .I had to threaten court action to get my money back .This after lovely friendly chats on the phone giving sympathy and promises of back in your account tomorrow stuff .
You have to chase them through the Scottish courts .There used to be a very long thread on here about other peoples misery with this lot. 

They are a dreadful company but they've been owned & run by Spanish company Iberdrola for 15+ years and I think they have only got worse in that time!