Scottish power nightmare

[tight fart]

I became responsible for the gas & electric for an empty property on 1/11/22 both meters are smart.
I’ve paid up to the 12th of feb this year and notified them the property was being sold and new owners from March 2nd.
I have a email acknowledging this.
But they then estimated my final bill from the previous year whilst the property was occupied.
So they are saying the empty house used as much energy in 12 days as the previous 3.5 months.
They are now threatening debt collection.
Some of their call handlers agree it doesn’t look right but admit they can’t do anything about it.
They keep asking for photographs of the meters from the 2nd of March, I explain I don’t have them as I live 250 miles away and their email said I didn’t need them as they were smart meters and round in circles we go.

[some bloke]

I feel your pain. We had an 18-month saga that ended with a complaint to the Ombudsman and them agreeing to drop their mistaken charges.

[normalbloke]

If both meters are smart, absolutely nothing needs to be estimated.

[interstellar]

I feel your pain too. I had a 12 month Scottish power saga last year where they couldn’t give me a bill.

Ombudsman were useless and just told them to give me a bill.

It was to do with a new build and them saying they didn’t supply me even though I had paid them for 3 years previous.

In the end I sold the house (not linked to this obviously) and on leaving they suddenly said I owed them for gas but wrote it off (a years worth) due to the inconvenience.

They were utterly woeful.

[heisthegaffer]

Someone else on here has had a lot of aggro with them. Simpo Two possibly?

[Simpo Two]

heisthegaffer said:

Someone else on here has had a lot of aggro with them. Simpo Two possibly?

Ha, well I saw title of this thread and had to pop in... yes. A complete bunch of fkwits, not least in having two departments with different tariffs, neither of whom have heard of the other. The scrap lasted about nine months during which I was bombarded with random invoices, red letters and phone calls. Really quite stressful and the epitome of everything that's wrong with modern 'internet' business.

[Honk]

aah...tttish Power. in the past they randomly decided I owed them £6000. Took the Ombudsman a while to sort them out. Latest episode was sudden doubling of direct debit when it should have been a 20% reduction...sorted again...or so I thought...just had Email to say we "need to increase your DD to get your account back on track".
Useless s and about to get worse I believe. No more 16 year olds in UK call centres as they are transferring this to Spain where their owner is based.

[ettore]

We’ve had the same st with Scottish Power across 2 properties (as have friends).

I’m surprised they haven’t been shut down quite frankly. Singly the most unimpressive customer experience I’ve ever suffered.

[Darumvej]

Another Scottish power ex customer. They are terrible.

5500 reviewers on Trustpilot, 97% bad or poor customer service.

[tight fart]

normalbloke said:

If both meters are smart, absolutely nothing needs to be estimated.

You would think.


They even argued that I didn’t have smart meters despite billing them previously.

[OutInTheShed]

Why is anyone still with Scottish Power?

[BMR]

Same here. Moved to a property in 2017, I actually work for an energy firm but they wouldn’t let me sign up for gas as the last owners had left a debt with SP. So I had to sign up an account with SP, to draw a line in the sand so I could move the supply to my employers

Sp then proceeded to disagree with the serial number of the meter and the read I had. They wanted to bill me £250 for 6 weeks usage in summer that I calculated to be £44.

I went through the email us pictures of the meters 7 days apart process 3 times before I threatened them with Ofgem. That seemed to get me someone decent to deal with and they wrote off my bill.

I wouldn’t go near them again.

[Mr Happy]

+1 unhappy ex scottish power customer. They were the existing supplier when I moved in, generated a bill way in excess of the background usage while the house was empty, it took two or three calls to get them to refund the money (taking around about an hour on hold each time to get through to a real person), then another month or so to get the overpaid amount refunded to me in my actual name, rather than "Mr. Occupier" as per the first cheque they cut, that my bank obviously wouldn't accept...

Absolute shower... I'd rather st in my hands and clap than use them ever again...

Edited by Mr Happy on Wednesday 12th April 20:04

[55palfers]

Privatisation eh.

[Tango13]

They threatened me with court action over an over inflated bill, the woman at the call centre soon STFU when I told her they couldn't take me to court as I was disputing the debt.

I also made a complaint about her personally and she had to fill in the complaint form describing her bad customer service and ignorance of the law

[21st Century Man]

I've had some pretty major fk ups with them, and new fk ups appear at random. The latest is that they've assumed I've moved house and so they have made me up a final account, also, as I've moved, I therefore wasn't entitled to the government EBSS and so this is being reclaimed and has been added to the final account as a debit.

Once I get this one straightened out, I'm going elsewhere.

[Badda]

I’ve had similar in the past with SP and my ‘case’ was handed to debt collectors. In the end I insisted they take me to court where I would show my documents of all calls, bills and paperwork showing I was right and they were wrong. I also said if they contacted me one more time without taking legal action, I would take them to court for harassment. Never heard from them again, over 8 years now.

[TonyRPH]

tight fart said:

normalbloke said:

If both meters are smart, absolutely nothing needs to be estimated.

You would think.


They even argued that I didn’t have smart meters despite billing them previously.

Not Scottish Power but our current supplier likes to estimate, despite us submitting meter readings every month on the last day of the month (no smart meter).

Recently, they have taken to providing a wildly optimistic estimate the day before the last day of the month, presumably to trounce our meter readings.

Needless to say, they then reckon we need to pay more, and we have to get our DD reduced each time.

Full of dirty little tricks they are...

[Simpo Two]

And all of the above shambles is called progress.

Call me old-fashioned but when there was a meter reader and you got a bill each quarter that you paid in arrears there was none of this mess, nor the millions of man-hours wasted by both parties arguing. It's the companies' lust for DD that causes a lot of the problems.

[dickymint]

Simpo Two said:

And all of the above shambles is called progress.

Call me old-fashioned but when there was a meter reader and you got a bill each quarter that you paid in arrears there was none of this mess, nor the millions of man-hours wasted by both parties arguing. It's the companies' lust for DD that causes a lot of the problems.

Even better when I was a kid. The meter man would come, empty the meters do a few calculations and leave a pile of shillings and florins on the kitchen table The downside was the shame suffered by Mum when some of the rebate left included the foreign coins that Dad managed to file down to make them fit