Hi everyone I am wondering if anyone could give me some advice as I am at my witts end. I am a customer with Scottish power and have been struggling to pay my monthly payments after they shot up from £50 a month to £80. To give you a little bit of information (This maybe very long so I do appoligise in advance) My father passed away last june I had additional costs (ie: funeral costs and other changes to income) i struggled to pay everything and ended up getting into debt all over. I went to pay plan who forward me to a company who entered me into a trust deed in july of 2011 and I was on a very tight budget but I just managed to make it. in september I became severely ill and was in and out of hospital every few weeks my partner was dealing with all the bills as best he could but none of the companys when he called them would deal with him as he wanted to explain about me being in hospital and he did not have access to my bank account and was making payments from his own money as best he could. When I got out of hospital I checked my bank account in order to pay the bills and found that money had been taken by another company and it had overdrawn my account at one point it meant when my next benefit money went in it (I am disabled) this swallowed it and I was then charged for unauthorised overdraft. I fought this out with the bank and it has taken me a while to get it sorted, I was only out of hospital about a week when I received a letter to say I had been kicked off of my payment plan, then another saying I owed £200+ on my bill. I contacted Scottish power and explained the situation and they confirmed my payments my partner had made but they felt i was not paying enough to cover my usage, he asked me for a meter reading which obviously calculated and that added another sum onto my bill making it even higher and said he could call me back after speaking to someone else about my situation to see if he could provide me anymore assistance but then proceeded to tell me about a nectar card and nectar points and went totally of subject. I waited allday and never received any call back from the gentleman. I decided to call back the next day to find out if there was anymore information as I thought this was a little strange as my bills had never came in previously more than a £150 in the whole 3 years I’ve lived at my address and ive done nothing different than i have in previous years and i only live in a little 2 apt not as if it’s a big house. I told the lady I spoke to about the problems I had with my bank and that I could not make a full payment this month and she said to me she would change my plan and I could pay it at the start of the following month (Which was two weeks from the date of when I called 4th of the month). I said ok and thanked her. I continued to pay the rate of £50 a month but never received my monthly bill like I had previously. I thought this was strange but continued as normal. in November I received a bill and noticed it was quarterly and for a full payment of the bill at £250. I called the customer services again in a panic and told them I could not pay the outstanding amount left on the bill in one full go and did not even know it had been changed to quarterly as that’s something I would never have agreed to as that’s would have just made things more difficult for me to pay out a lump sum after 3 months. She told me she would put me back on the monthly plan. I asked her if it was possible to pay by fortnightly direct debit only for her to tell me Scottish power did not accept weekly or fortnightly payments by direct debit but she could send me out a card and pay it by pay point. I told her because of my disability this would be a little more difficult as I have problems walking and don’t always get out. She said I could online weekly though and I said fine. She asked me for a most recent meter reading and that was fine. £ Then in decemeber I got a letter saying they were upping my payments from 50 pounds a month to £80. In a panic again realising I would be scrapping bottom of the barrell I called them again explaining this was a problem as I am disabled and on a low income and about my trust deed. She kept trying to get me to change to a pre-payment meter but again as I explained this was going to cause more problems as I don’t always get out and I because of my illness I need regular electricity usage for shower, bed lift and other adaptions for my disability and I know for a fact I would be paying much more fortnightly with that than paying as I was. She told me to think about it and said i could keep giving them regular meter reading to keep an eye on my usage as I stated I thought it was strange how high it seemed to have jumped. (I know there is price rises all over the uk but mines seem overly high) I then asked her what tariff I was on and she said standard and I asked her if there was any tariff relating to people who are disabled and on a low income and she said no (The reason I asked this is because I get a tariff for my gas with another company relating to my low income and being disabled which is much lower than standard tarriffs). I asked her if there was any grants or help I could have if I provided incomes sheets and she told me she would find out and send me the information but also said she would have someone else call me back to go through ways of saving. She took another meter reading from me and then said I could again start paying as the start of the 4th of the month weekly. Since then I have been struggling to pay the £80 pounds but I then recently got a bill in at the end of February saying I owe them £270 pounds. I called again but the person was so unhelpfull I came of the phone in tears. I have managed to pay the £80 in February and then £50 this month but am struggling to pay the extra £30. I decided to take advice from a debt advisor after I got the bill in February who told me he felt I should contact my trustee of my trust deed and ask to be discharged or ask him to step down to as my trustee so I could apply for Sequestration (Bankruptcy) as this would be my only option. I asked how this would effect my gas and electricity accounts. He said because I was in debt with the electricity account it would obviously clear this as I can not pay it but when I asked how it would affect future payements He told me they may allow me to continue with my regular method or put me on pay meters. I explained this was again going to be a problem. He then said if I did not want to apply for Sequestration I could write to Scottish power explaining of my situation and asking for a more manageable payment option until I get on my feet because ofgem requires energy supplier to consider circumstances and ability to pay when agreeing to a debt repayment plan. I printed out two letter and sent them to the two available Scottish power address I found on there site as I was not sure which one they had to be sent to but have still received no response to either. Does anyone have any suggestions to what I can do now as I said i have made a payment to them this month and its reduced the bill to £211 but I am still going to struggle to pay the other £30 pounds and then my next 80 payment will be due again on the 4th and I really don’t know what to do. Ive tried to speak to Scottish power on various occasions and it always seems to make things much worse and I am really at my witts end and it is really scaring me that I will be cut off and putting stress into my illness. If anyone has any suggestions I would be much appreciated Thank You Lou

Thank you everyone for your advice. I will get the letter scanned in the as soon as i can. Do i post them here or is it another section? Donkeyb in answer to your questions. My father right now is not in a fit state to deal with this because of health problem decling rapidly he has various illness's and he is in and out of hospital on a regular basis and is on a lot of medication and because of this he becomes very forgetfull and is not with it so to speak because of the med's he is on. Before the phone calls and the two letter's he has recieved in the last week there has been no other correspondence been made from hfo that we are aware of. So i am assuming that they have just aquired this debt as this has been the first contact they have ever made and it was very threatening as i said my parents are petrified by todays letter. As you can imagine i am worried for my own dad's sake due to his ill health i am a little worried this will set his health into a deeper decline than it allready is. I have allready blocked the phone number on my mobile that they had called from by adding them to my reject list I think last payments of the debt would have been around summer of 2004 as that would have been when my father was diagnosed and he was taken in for surgery and that was around the time i remember speaking to barclaycard when they called there home as i was living there at the time and was dealing with a lot of what was going on as my mother was not dealing with things very well with worrying on weather my father was going to pull through for being diagnosed. Thank you coledog i will get this letter printed out and sent to barclaycard as you have suggested. Harassed sensor it would be exactly 6 years since the last payment as i said previously in 2004 was last time any contact from barclaycard was made. I would also like to add to my previous post that the printed ariel picture of my parent home that was added to the back of the letter looked as though the company had got it from google maps as the picture that was printed in the letter was an older view from a few years ago and it was my partner that noticed it and when we looked it up it was indeed the same ariel view.

Hi everyone I'm new here so i am not sure if i am posting this in the right section. If not i appoligise in advance and please move this to relevant section. I am looking for some advice for my father in regard to a company called HFO. In 2004 my dad had a barclaycard credit card and has recently been contacted by hfo in regards to an outstanding balance they say he owes them in the sum of nearly 5000 pounds. My dad did previously have a account with barclaycard but it was only in the range of a few hundred pound he owed them but in the same year my dads health detterorated as he was diagnosed with kidney cancer and was admitted to surgery instantly in which a massive tumour was removed and he went through large amount of treatment and tests and admittedly never got round to paying off the balance. When my father was in hospital at that partifcular time i remember being at my parent house and a phone call came for my dad from barclaycard, i explained the situation and nothing was heard from them again not by letter, phone call or anything and it genuiley with the way thing had been happen was totally forgot about. On the 17th of this month i recieved a phone call on home phone from someone claiming to be called Andy from hfo quizzing me about my father, He started off the call hi Louise it's andy could i speak to thomas please, catching me off guard and confused i said my father?? then he said i'm from Hfo we need to speak to him. As soon as i heard this alarm bells began to rang and i asked him how did he get my number? i had not lived with my parents for years. He kept evading my question how he got my number. He asked me if he could speak to my father i told him i did not live with him and hadnt for years and he got rather cross with me like i was lying. then he changed his approaching asking if my father still stayed at his address and such and asked me to confirm my dads home number which he read out to me. because of the call i refused to answer any questions again asking how he got my number and the phone cut out on there end weather the person realised i was not going to answer his question or not or weather the call cut out accidently i do not know. Later that day i had three more calls on my mobile this time from the same person asking the same questions. I Again requested how they got my number everytime as well as my mobile they would not answer me so i told them if they refused to answer my question i was not going to answer theres. On the same day my father received a letter at his home address from HFO and the letter he recieved was very much full of slanderous sentence. They tried to imply on the letter that my father had been evading them for years by moving to address and trying to apply for credit elsewhere and that he has not been placing his name on the voters role also to advade being traced. This alone was not true because my dad has lived at the same address for the last 13 years and if he had been moving address then why did they send the letter to the same address he has always lived at, hes has also been on the voter roll every year and he has not applied for any credit since 2004 when he was diagnosed with his cancer and has basically been bed ridden since with all treatment hes had. I contacted citizeans advice for him and spoke to them yesterday in regards to the letter and they said the would assist my father with this matter. But today my mother phoned me in a panic and very upset that another letter had arrived much worse than the first only this time a small ariel picture of my parents house was attached to it and the balance from the previous letter had went up nearly 500 pounds. This is really scaring my parents as there talks of balliffs and all sorts on the letter and the picture has scared the life out of them and i am worried all this will set my dads health on a decline. I really need any and all advice i could get in how to handle this if anyone could help me i would very much appreicate it. Thank you Louise