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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? -- |
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Scottish
Power - Can Seriously Damage Your Wealth
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| Just One Big Mistake |
Before you start to read my very painful and truthful review on Scottish Power, I would like you to bear in mind that this opinon contains numerous tips on how not to get caught out like I did, so if you read this review there is no excuse for you to be as stupid as I was!
When we first moved into the house we are now in, Scottish Power ( I will call SP) were the supplier of our electricty
and rather than go through the hassle of pricing up and changing suppliers we just kept with SP.
(1st mistake)I can now not stress enough to people that you should really look into these things and find out excatly what you are paying for, and how much its all going to cost.
Our SP bills arrived and we payed them as they came in, we were paying quartley
and when the bills arrived I would write a cheque, send it off and that was that, I never thought twice about it, it was all so easy.
(2nd mistake) Always check the meter readings on the bills when they arrive from any company against the actual meter reading in your house as lots of companies do send out bills with estimated readings, and you may find that you are paying to much, which I found out too late and to my cost.
It all started to go wrong when we received a bill, and at the time we did not have the funds to cover a cheque, so I popped it in to a drawer with the intention of paying it as soon as I could.
(3rd mistake) Never Ever be tempted to file bills in the junk drawer!
After a few weeks I was cleaning out the junk drawer, and found the offending bill, still at that time though we did not have the money to cover a cheque, so I rang up SP and spoke to a very nice lady on the phone, who put my mind at rest and explained to me that I need’nt worry as long as I stayed in touch with them ( she was on my christmas card list!).
After talking with my husband, we worked out a budget to try and stop our spiral into debt, and so that we would be able to see a l
ight at the end of the tunnel with regards to our money situation we re-stuctured all the payments with our bills.
So I called that nice lady at SP, only this time I got some bored young man, who would of rather been down the pub drinking with his mates than talk to me( Hmmm sounds like my other half!)
The young mans attiude was really very poor and did not inspire me with confidence, si I found myself checking everything over and over with him.
We wanted to pay our bill with SP on a monthly budget scheme by direct debit, so that the out-going would be easier as instead of paying a chunk every quarter we would be paying a small amount each month by direct debit, and have peace of mind that our bill was being paid.
"Yes" he said
"thats all done for you"
I had to ask the man if we would need to sign anything, his excat response was:
"oh yeah" chortle " you should be doing my job, you know more than me!" ( if only I had known!)
He assured me that we would have a direct debit mandate sent out, allw e had to do was sign it and pop it back in the post.
(4th mistake) If you are not happy with the person that you are speaking to, then please just ask to speak with someone else, as after all its your money that you are discussing.
The mandate did arrive, we signed and sent it back.
Our peace of mind was sealed.
That was over a year ago, three weeks ago I got a bill in the post from SP for £297.82, you can imagine my horror, but I thought one simple phonecall would put it right, there must of been a mistake as I pay every month from my bank.
The "simple" phonecall left me heartbroken, the person who I spoke to, who yet again was as much use as a chocolate tea-pot, said that no payments had been rceived under our account.
I asked her how this could be when we pay by direct debit each month,
"I dunno" was my answer.
I asked her if
someone could call me back that would know about it. Sh sais she would arrange this, and we agreed a time.
Needless to say an hour after this agreed time I ended up calling back, their customer service is truly abysmal. ( maybe that first nice lady I spoke was sacked for being too helpful??)
When I called them back I had all my bank statements handy so that I could quote that the payments had gone out of my bank.
When I gave the details to the 4th person I had been passed on to, he pointed out that the account number that our bank had been paying into did not match our SP account number.
(5th mistake) Please please check everything that you sign.
He assured me that the payments would be in a "lost payment" account and they would be found and added to my account.
I asked to be told when this was done, so that I would know that this nightmare was over.
I had heard nothing after a week, so I called them again ( my phone bill was on the way to being as high as my SP bill!)I was informed that the payments had still not been traced. I was very concerned over this and spoke to my bank who assured me that SP will be liable for the payments as they had been being paid each month.
I got a letter yeaterday morning to tell me that it has all been corrected, and our account is now up to date, but I can tell you that this whole experiance has left me with a bad taste in my mouth, I would never recommend them.
I know more than anyone that mistakes do happen, I am quite prepared to accept that, but what I found shocking was their customer service skills, it took me an age to speak to someone at my expense who knew about the problem, it seemed that the majority of their staff did not know how to deal with the situation, they had no idea, which resulted in me being passed from pillar to post.
What I also found upsetting was when I did get the bill for over £200, it had a number of bills on their as it was
for a long period of time, it was broken down into quarters, and the meter reading on the fianl bill did not match my actual meter reading,but after all the hassle and finding out from a friend that the savings would only be a few pence I decided not to raise the issue with SP as I really could not be bothered to tackle their customer service jungle again.
What you must also agree that is alarming is that it took over a year for this to come to light,now why did someone not notice my account was falling in to arrears?
I had no communication from SP, no bills, no final bills and no red letters the only thing to arrive was this hugh fat bill for over £200. If for some reason my payments had not of been going out of my bank and I was sat home with my feet up thinking that they were, I would now be in debt with SP, which I really can’t afford to be, but it would not of happened if I had received some sort of communication in that year.
I hope you make a point of my mistakes, I hope that they may help you not to fall into a similiar nightmare.
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