Scottish Power

What a nightmare!!  So ever since my husband passed away a few years ago, I have had issues with this company.  I don't like to slag off others and rarely do it but they have caused so much upset over the last few years for me.  When my husband was alive, he paid all of our household bills from his account and dealt with all the set ups and phone calls regarding the utility bills (of course, some accounts such as BT, will only allow one name on the account anyway and so will only speak to that named person on the account, which makes difficulties when trying to sort things out...). 

After John passed away, another task to carry out, was to sort out all of the bills.  While grieving and looking after two small children who were also grieving, as well as start work (which is another story of struggle in itself...) there are just so many things to do that you kind of get lost in it all and it becomes one overwhelming mess.  You have to explain your situation at the start of each phone call, which inevitably makes you cry.  The pain is so raw at this stage.  Anyone who has known grief like this knows only too well of the brain fog, desperation, tears, deep sadness, loneliness etc etc, to put it lightly, it's really tough!  Anyway, with all this going on, I failed to set up new payments for gas and electric and never heard from them for 2 years.  It was only when I met Dave and we were talking about bills, that it dawned on me that I didn't have a direct debit set up to pay for gas and electric and had never received a bill....Our Scottish Power account was an online account and so we never received any paper bills (like to be as environmentally friendly as possible ) which I think is why I it became overlooked.  Any communication from them would have gone direct to John's personal emails which I had no reason to go in to.

Dave helped me sort it all out - I now owed about £2000......  The chap that we spoke to on the phone from Scottish Power, said that they'd probably have never noticed that I hadn't been paying the bill if we hadn't have contacted them.... of course, if we hadn't have contacted them and then a few years down the line they'd have discovered it themselves, the bill would have been even higher!!  We set up a payment plan to start paying back - being honest doesn't always bid well it seems....  Anyway, the bill should have taken 5 years to clear but Scottish Power kept taking money from my account, more than they should have been.  We contacted them again and they said that they had been collecting the debt twice per month instead of once along with the monthly usage (my bill for gas and electric, as you can imagine, was therefore really rather high!!).  They said that they would sort this out and it wouldn't happen again.  Unfortunately, it did!  Another phone call....

You'd have thought that after all this hassle that it would now go smoothly.  NO...  They still continued to take double money from my account.  They also put my monthly bill up by about £50 per month and then again by another £45 per month.  I just could not believe it.  It felt like I was being punished and it was getting me down.  Speaking on the phone is not a strong point of mine so Dave luckily took over for me again.  I had a smart meter fitted by Scottish Power about a year ago and after Dave speaking to them this time, we discovered that, apparently, my smart meter wasn't connected properly and the bills that I had been paying were only for electric and not for the gas usage - how was I to know this???  As far as I was concerned, the meter had been installed correctly by their engineer and what I was reading on my screen, was correct - as anyone else would also believe I'm sure...  I understand that we should pay for what we use but there has been considerable customer neglect from Scottish Power as far as I am concerned.

We went through the complaints department and yes, the team were polite and offered some money off but nothing that would near compensate for how we'd been treated the last few years.