Damn Scottish Power annual energy assesment!

First step, check you meter readings are correct. If they are working on estimates your bill might be wildly out.
Regards




X

Hi there, I didn't notice this thread when I posted one of my own a wee while ago but I have just got a letter through from SP and called and was fobbed off and offered £4.50 off per month. Last winter I was paying £24ish per month DD and only owed them £21 by May2005, that was with my heating on day and night sometimes over the winter, now going into this winter they want to charge me £49.50 per month. I am £58.27 in credit with them. They weren't really very helpful on the phone, the girl explained how they worked it out but this still doesn't justify my heating bills doubling since last year. Angry? Me? Blinkin' right.

A similar thing happened with me too which I posted about a while back. When I signed up with them about 15 months ago, I was chuffed that my payments would be £8 a month lower. In fact I asked them to keep it slightly higher to allow for any extra bad weather, so was paying £40 dual fuel a month. A few months later I had a re-estimate bill and went into shock. They wanted to adjust it to £65 a month. When I rang them up the gist of it was, that they were basing it on the winter usage rather than all the year round. I said why are they not doing it like most utility companies and averaging out. They said they were but couldn't explain satisfactorily why they were basing it on the winter usage. I persuaded them to keep it at the £40 and if I though I would get behind I would alter the payments. For some weird reason at the anniversary date in August it still came to my being in arrears to the tune of £140. I asked them why this was when I had gone totally on what the rep had calculated my savings to be. (I would have kept my payments at the higher rate if I had known. They said my usage must have been much higher than estimated. (very strange when it has been consistant to within £3-£4 a month either way for all these years. Along with the newly estimated higher bill I would have to pay the arrears off on top. I asked if I could do this myself by making extra payments as and when I could afford them, but they told me no, I would have to pay a minimum of £60 a month. After spending to long on the phone with them I resigned myself to this worrying fact. The next thing I had was another letter saying my payments would not be changing for the coming year! Of course knowing I am behind I have registered with their site online and I am paying this off bit by bit anyway. Seems their left hand doesn't know what their right hand is doing.

I seem to remember that when I queried how he could estimate the payment it was something along the lines of the following: He said that the calculator contraption he had in his hand calculated all the different rates from the different companies. When I said, "But different companies have different ways of doing things such as some have standing charges, others don't, others have it tiered etc" he said that all that was allowed for in the calculations. I must admit it did seem a bit far fetched, but with technology moving on like it does I thought maybe. After hearing so many similar stories it seems it is a popular policy of theirs to try and get customers to be in credit, or pay extra payments based on their winter usage, so they can bank the interest. At the moment there is no point in me looking elsewhere as I am capped until 2007, unless of course fuel prices drop dramatically, but I guess there is no chance of that happening for a while.

bunking_off wrote:

Yes, but you're missing the point here. I've come across quite a few Scottish Power customers who at the time of their annual review have been hit with significant changes to the monthly payments, with little basis when compared to their actual usage measured across a year.

My own payments were £65/month. I knew I wasn't paying enough, and a fair reflection would be £75/month. To pay off the arrears over a year would add a max of £10/month. They wanted £120/month...

Even when presented with usage figures they refused to budge. I did actually construct a mathematical model of the consumption and payments (sorry, can't help it, I'm an engineer with an MBA) and concluded that their schedule could only make sense if the average credit balance on the account that they were trying to achieve across a year was approx £100. Now, logically that average balance should be zero - goes in debt across winter, in credit across summer. Undoubtedly they'd have been forced to drop the monthly payments at the next annual review, but that'd only be after they'd be earning interest on my money for a year.

Think of it this way - it's a nice little earner for them. If they manage to get their DD customers in average credit of, say, a month's payment, they'll be earning interest on 8.5% of their total revenues - the interest on that could realistically add 0.5% to their overall operating margin, which in utility industries is a significant amount...

With respect I haven’t missed the point.

I was making the general point that many consumers have a mind set that believes(or wants to believe) that their direct debit payments somehow correlate to their usage. Very often it does not!

I am in no way defending Scottish Power or any other utility company and am happy to join in the general condemnation of the quality of many of the staff in their call centres. Your case is a good example.

We frequently read posts on this forum saying Company A are ‘charging’ me £x per month and when I spoke to Company B they said I would only have to pay £y per month.

It is the job of the operators in Company B to persuade customers to join their firm and they will pitch monthly payments artificially low in order to gain custom. Of course next year, when a large debit balance has to be cleared, payments increase massively; which seems to come as a surprise to many customers!

Surely anyone can look at their bills and read their annual consumption in kWh. It really is not rocket science to then calculate their bill using the tariff – just simple arithmetic. Armed with that information they can discuss realistic monthly payments, if “they refuse to budge” you can vote with your feet as you did.