Eight months to fit a new meter

Nearly two years ago I moved into a bungalow fitted with prepayment meters supplied by Scottish Power.

Around eight months ago I rang Scottish Power and arranged to change to paying by direct debit.

Switching the gas account was no problem but, apparently, the computer would not let Scottish Power do this for the electricity.

I was told it would take about a week to fix this problem. FW, NORTHUMBERLAND

You could have had the gas meter changed immediately but you made it clear to Scottish Power that both meters had to be changed on the same day.

You have a small shop that you look after alone and you cannot afford to close the business for any longer than is absolutely necessary in order to wait for the engineer to carry out the work.

A week later you rang Scottish Power again and were told it would take two weeks to solve the issue.

A month on, still with no progress, you rang again and waited, as you had before, a long time in the telephone queue. Everyone you eventually got through to said all the right things, but nothing seemed to be happening.

Eventually an appointment was made.

However, instead of sending one gas and one electricity person, two gas technicians arrived.

On three subsequent occasions appointments were not kept at all.

The final appointment was in the evening, which is the first you knew that evening appointments were available. Had you been aware of this before you would have had the others scheduled in the evening so you could have kept the shop open.

When you decided to make an official complaint, a Scottish Power employee gave you the wrong email address to send it to.

Then, when you got the right one from the website you mentioned my name but the deadline for an answer came and went with no reply.

After I contacted Scottish Power they sent you an email giving a daytime appointment, which you turned down.

Scottish Power then came back saying it could do the job that same evening.

An engineer from about 150 miles away turned up and did the work. After eight months of aggravation the matter was sorted at last.

After a lot of pushing from me, Scottish Power has paid you £435 in total. This includes £120 for the four missed or fudged appointments and the remainder for goodwill.