Just a rant.
These people are nuts. Or maybe just really clever.
I am paying £191 a month by DD (set by them when I transferred my account to my temporary address in May). My bills up to yesterday included, I still have a credit balance of £459 after already receiving some money back in October because I had a high credit balance then.
SP's own forecast just now of my balance at my "annual review date" of 16 Sept 2020 was over £2,400.
I calculate that if I used no gas or electricity at all between now and September, they would then have £1,987 of my money so obviously their calculation is wrong.
They have just allowed me, online, to reduce my monthly DD to a minimum of £153 which I have done, effective February. That means I will still be in credit in September unless I average more than £198 of usage per month in the meantime. My bill for December was £160. I'm pretty sure they will have at least £600 of my money by September if I keep paying £153.
I give them readings monthly so they could work all this out for themselves.
Logically, I could just stop the DD and they should use up my credit, but I just know it will have some unwanted effect - I mean, would they chase me for money, based on their own calculation of the minimum I must pay each month?
Or, I could just ring them up but experience suggests that whatever action followed would be different to whatever had been agreed.
I know I'll get the money or the value back sometime, but this is insane. How could anybody living hand to mouth cope with this? Is it normal?
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Feel free to use my referrer code to move to Octopus (who are probably considerably cheaper than SP!!). We'd get £50 each... :-)
share.octopus.energy/open-camel-464
Incl VAT I pay 13.8p per unit for electricity plus 25p a day standing charge (and an overnight rate for 4 hours of 5p a unit to charge the car etc)
and 3.16p for gas, 16.8p standing charge
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I expect I've said it before, but I can't understand why people sign up for any kind of arbitrary monthly direct debit thingy. We've always just used our electricity and then every three months they say "what's your reading", and then "ok, you owe us £185" or whatever it is, and they then take that by direct debit out of the bank. They just call it "quarterly direct debit".
I know it's four lumps through the year rather than a smooth amount, but we just pay what we've used and always know exactly where we are. None of this "in credit" business or floating monthly payments.
Perhaps my suppliers (in the last 20 years it was always either EON or for the last few years, EDF) are the only ones who do this and if I tried to change supplier I'd be in, as it were, for a shock?
But the tariff seems ok to me. Our annual electricity spend is about £700 ish.
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I'd be happy with that Crankers, although it didn't seem to be on offer when I transferred/opened the account. I spent hours on the phone to various people before I managed to get them to 'freeze' the account for my proper address where we are planning to demolish and rebuild (the supply is in effect disconnected, with the overhead power line removed and a disc inserted in the gas supply at the meter, but they initially said I must continue to pay the standing charges unless I paid SGN about £800 to remove the gas supply entirely).
I'll have a look at Octopus Smokie. I'm slightly worried that in this Kafkaesque world of Scottish Power I will have to have all the arguments again as my old address is still officially served by them.
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My supplier wanted to up my DD by an absurd amount when I have a healthy credit with them. I sent them a snotty email stating I wasn't aware of an ice age looming imminently. They agreed to let the original DD stand.
When I moved to my current (sic) supplier, I was able to give them an accurate estimate of my usage based on the previous three years and the DD was set appropriately.
I use MSE near the end of each contract to decide where to go next (not always the cheapest - read the reviews): www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/you-switch-gas-electricity/
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After a bit of playing about on comparison sites I'm sticking with SO for another year. A few were cheaper but only tens in a year and some (eg Outfox) had pretty bad write ups for customer service.
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I registered with "money saving expert" MSE energy club. I have no connection (!) with them. You just record your usage and the trigger savings level at which you want advised of a cheaper supplier. It saves me trawling other comparison sites who I suspect have varying degrees of tie-in to particular suppliers.
MSE are very open about which suppliers give them a commission and how the service of each supplier rates. Under their latest assessment I have just transferred to Igloo. It's a variable tariff but no penalty to change to another supplier.
Back to the OP, I was with Scottish Power a few years back and had no problems. My recollection is that they were amenable to refunds of credits and to reasonable adjustments to payments but maybe times have changed.
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>> Feel free to use my referrer code to move to Octopus (who are probably considerably
>> cheaper than SP!!). We'd get £50 each... :-)
>>
>> share.octopus.energy/open-camel-464
>>
>> Incl VAT I pay 13.8p per unit for electricity plus 25p a day standing charge
>> (and an overnight rate for 4 hours of 5p a unit to charge the car
>> etc)
>>
>> and 3.16p for gas, 16.8p standing charge
>>
I'm just stating my second year with Octopus. I've yet to get a win on the Wheel of Fortune though (You get a spin every month when you submit your reading).
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I started with Octopus in Nov 2018. Haven't you got smart meters? I thought they only did them. So I don't submit readings...
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We haven't got a smart meter and simply transferred from Extra Energy (Who went bust during the process) without a problem.
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We also registered with the MSE Energy Club and have found it excellent. At the moment we are with EBICO, although they are still the cheapest, they have jacked up their prices. I would never sign up to any monthly DD, we pay quarterly for what we've used, no more, no less.
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"These people are nuts."
From my experience, I agree.
"I give them readings monthly"
Yes - you should always take a monthly reading regardless of whether or not a monthly submission is required from you - so that you can quote the figures in case of dispute. You should also make a note of the readings if, say, the meter is changed; and, of course, note the dates.
I changed from Scottish Power in August 2011 - at that time they owed me some £350 credit; when I rang them to ask for my credit to be refunded, I was informed that my account would be reviewed 'next March' i.e. more than 6 months away. I was dealing with the first level of customer interface and, when I told them the exact figures at the time of a meter-change some 3 months earlier, they didn't even know that there had been a meter-change. I explained that it was MY money and that they shouldn't be sitting on it for another 6 months. The query was escalated to the next level - and then again up to 'complaints' level. At this level, the staff member was able to see additional screens and confirm that my figures were correct. I demanded, and got, an immediate interim refund of £300 - and a few days later, they forwarded the remainder.
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I'm pretty sure I heard (?Money Box) that energy companies are now not allowed to keep credit (maybe over a certain amount) and it had to be refunded after quite a short period, they are accumulating large amounts of interest from the slow refunds and stopping customers switching.
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My supplier, Ovo, pays 3% interest on credit balances. Better than any other savings.
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I’ve been with OVO for several years. No idea how to work out the interest on my credit balance, which is about £300. I pay £36 pcm for my gas & leccy.
I wonder if I increased my monthly payment tenfold and built up a substantial credit balance from existing savings if interest paid is capped. Hypothetical of course.
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I was previously on a fixed price contract with South East Electricity. Come renewal they tried the usual rip off the punter trick (about £300 pa more) so I changed supplier.
This was 4 months ago.
Since then they have threatened me with court action to recover outstanding direct debits which I cancelled when I switched not trusting them to stop charging after I had moved.
I made a formal complaint and they were very apologetic - but they should not have got it wrong in the first place!
They have just got round to giving me a final gas bill for £22.
In summary - pathetic customer service and incompetence somewhere in the chain. Like many other "essential" services (insuarance, broadband etc) providers I simply do not trust them.
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Scottish Power - smokie
