ScottishPower sent three baffling bills and now wants £3,755
I MOVED home in September 2014 and sent a new meter reading to energy supplier ScottishPower. I asked to be put on a monthly direct debit, but I heard nothing back.
I kept phoning and sending updated meter readings but had no reply until June 24, 2015, when it finally wrote but did not mention a payment method.
I received my first bill on November 5, 2015, more than a year after I had moved in. There was no prepayment meter in my home, yet the bill was based on a prepayment electricity tariff, which is particularly expensive.
During August 2016, I received three separate bills for the same period. One was for £1,877.34, another for £2,816.01 and the third for £3,754.68. ScottishPower appears to be breaching the energy code of practice by billing me more than one year in arrears and by not providing accurate bills. I have made one payment of £921.19 as I do not wish to owe too much, but the whole thing is a mess. I often wonder why people fear customer service difficulties when moving to one of the smaller energy providers — the big six are perfectly capable of creating their own awful problems for customers.
ScottishPower made a complete mess of your account and you have told me that while battling this, you have also been fighting cancer for a year and a half.
It turns out your account itself was not set up properly until July 2016, but from the start you were incorrectly put on a prepayment meter tariff, an error that was not corrected for 14 months.
So what has ScottishPower done to fix this? Well, it has now agreed to withdraw all further charges from September 2014 to April 2016 — writing off a total of £2,307.07.
It has also knocked off a further £278.18 from your bill for the past 12 months by moving you to the cheapest tariff. this means you actually owe £623.37, but it has reduced this by a further £150 as a goodwill gesture, making the outstanding bill £473.37.
However, you have already paid £921.19, which puts you £447.82 in credit. to send you the refund, ScottishPower will need an up-todate meter reading.
the firm has written to you to explain all of this and has asked you to make contact to discuss a payment method. WE HAVE been plagued by letters from Sky TV ever since we moved house. One day it tells us we are in debt, the next that it owes us money.
Now we have had a letter saying the debt will be referred to a collection agency if we fail to pay it. We have tried to respond to the various communications, often waiting lengthy periods on the telephone to speak to someone, but we are getting nowhere.
I’m 83 and my wife is 81. We have never been in debt and find the issue most wearing. R. B., Stratford-upon-Avon. You provided a very helpful breakdown of your communications with Sky, showing dates, amounts demanded and what you describe as indecipherable emails (often 12 pages long).
You received differing bills within a matter of days. for example, on April 25, Sky asked for £43.49, which you paid and were then told the account was closed. But four days later, you received a bill for £16.68 and were told that if you did not pay, your services would be cancelled and further charges would be added, even though you had not used Sky since April 10.
And so it went on until June 14, when Sky decided that it owed you £5.68. It has now apologised for the confusion.
It seems that when you switched your broadband to a new provider, you thought this would also cancel your tV, which I think is a perfectly reasonable assumption. You stopped your direct debit and your account went into arrears.
When you spoke to Sky, it cancelled the account and said there was £64.54 left to pay, plus a fee of £11 for cancelling your HD sports package within the minimum term.
the payments you made and credits applied by Sky then generated a £5.68 credit.
Sky says you also received a number of automated mailings, which it understands may have been confusing. It has now written to you to apologise and has sent you £50 as a goodwill gesture.