 |
|
|
|
|
Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body,
the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things
happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil.
Marcus Aurelius April 26, 121 AD- March 17, 180 AD
-- Was Scottish Power operational at this time? -- |
|
Scottish
Power - Can Seriously Damage Your Wealth
|
|
| |
| Several Payments later |
Scottish Power took a Switch payment for six months’ worth of gas and electricity which came to £310. I went on holiday and upon return received a letter telling me that due to its systems having failed SP had not processed the payment and would I kindly make the payment again. At the same time, dated and postmarked on exactly the same dates, they sent me a snotty letter reminding me to pay up and threatening the usual nasty consequences.
I asked Scottish Power why it had thrown away my payment details and authorisation before confirming that the payment had went through, and it said this was because of the Data Protection Act which specifically required this handling; this was a lie. I also asked why the reminder had been sent when it was known what the problem was, and SP said it could not suppress such letters "because of the system", as though the computer systems were ordained by God instead of being designed to meet the Company’s specific business needs. I wrote again, pointing out that the Data Protection Act made no specific provisions of this sort and that if SP couldn’t suppress reminder letters one had to wonder what else was wrong with its systems: what would happen if a reminder were generated for someone recently deceased, for example?
This was their further response:
"In response to the points raised I can confirm that Scottish Power have (sic) made the business decision not to retain customers (sic) debit card details after an attempt has been made to process a payment. In your case a letter was sent to inform you of the system failure after we tried to contact you by telephone first.
"In regard to the suppression of reminder letters there is no facility within our system to do this".
Well, SP now admits implicitly that it lied to me the first time around, although there is no explicit acknowledgement of or apology for this. The other point just hasn’t been addresse
d at all.
In the meantime I’ve twice sat in the telephone queue for 20 minutes on another matter, listening to Massenet’s Meditiation from Thais played on the saxophone instead of the violin.
Add to that the fact that SP thinks it can estimate six months’ worth of consumption based on readings taken over four days before I’d been given the keys to my new house, and I’m getting out now, before they make a cockup which has serious consequences.
Price is for six months’ gas and electricity use in a three-bedroom detached house in Glasgow. There are several computers as well as the usual appliances; gas central heating, hot water and hobs, electricity everything else, no fireplace.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
