Living costs Family fear faulty utility meter will inflate OAP’S energy bills
THE family of an elderly man fear he will receive an astronomical bill in months to come after struggling with faulty gas and electric prepayment meters since the beginning of the year.
His family claims Scottish Power have been slow in sorting out the issue and his grandaughter, Abbi Woods, from Gloucester, claims the utlity giant is ‘mugging him off.’
Jim Havvock, 75 from Cheltenham, initially experienced problems as he was unable to connect his mobile phone app to his electric meter to top up his credit.
A new meter was installed but due to the faulty app, he has been receiving electricity but has has not yet been able to pay for it.
He recently had a new electric meter installed as the previous one was faulty. However, it is claimed the engineer did not connect both the gas and electric meters up correctly and the app for the gas meter is also not working.
Now Mr Havvock needs get on his knees to manually type a 22 digit code into the gas box which is built into the ground. He struggles to see the numbers so uses a magnifying glass or waits until a family member pops in to see him.
Granddaughter Abbi said: “The last time we had communication with Scottish Power was when we needed to replace a broken meter. Nothing has been sorted about the electric bill he has not had yet and it is getting to be a bit of a joke and they are mugging him off.
“We have been told someone will be in contact with him. There is no email address or contact number to get hold of the person who is meant to be looking after this.
“Granddad is annoyed with this. The issues with the electric started in January and now it is September. They have not done anything we have asked.”
Scottish Power said they had been working to resolve the issues. The company has stated they will progress the issue as matter of urgency.
A Scottish Power spokesperson said: “We’re really sorry for the issues experienced by Mr Havvock and have been working to resolve these over the past few months in conjunction with the meter operator and the national meter database.
“We can assure Mr Havvock and his family that we’re continuing to progress this as a matter of urgency and will keep him informed throughout.
“Once we have everything resolved, we will then be in a position to discuss goodwill with Mr Havvock in recognition of his poor customer experience.”