Scottish Power have lost touch with reality !

[danny49]

Complaint against Scottish Power

 

In February 2014 I and my partner moved into our new rented house, we are the legal tenants of the property.

 

We agreed the start gas & electricity meter readings with the outgoing tenant.

 

My partner contacted Scottish Power by phone & tried to arrange the taking over of the account.

 

She is foreign & although her spoken & written English is very very good, she could not understand or make herself understood to Anthony the customer service operator because of his very broad accent.

 

I took over the conversation, & I too struggled to comprehend what he was saying, so the conversation ended with me telling him her name, the address, & the meter readings, telling him she wanted the cheapest online dual fuel paperless tariff, and requested that standing order mandates be put in the post to her.

 

After approximately six months she started to receive & continued to receive letters addressed to a “Mr Daz”. As these communications were not addressed to her & she was not legally able to open them, they were correctly put in the postbox for return to Scottish Power with the words “not known at this address”.

 

To date some 25+ communications have been received & returned in this manner, making Scottish Power fully aware of their error.

 

Our local sorting office assures us that any such return to sender mail is treated very seriously & is returned to the originating address.

 

On Friday the 26th February 2016 she returned home to discover that a forced entry at the front door had been attempted, & that the 2 credit meters situated at the front of the building had been changed for prepayment versions.

 

A day later a plastic key for the electricity meter arrived in the post.

 

No plastic card was supplied, as promised, to activate the gas meter.

 

2 documents where put through the letterbox by their representatives Richburns on 26.02.2016.

 

The first document addressed to a Mr Daz refers to a warrant of entry granted by the current resident’s local magistrate’s court, a demand for £1,028.49, some spurious reference about a dog plus the claim that the warrant permits the exchange of the electricity meter.

 

The second document, again addressed to Mr Daz refers to pre-payment meter fitted & gas supply disabled, plus a demand for £826.56.

 

It is my understanding that in order for Scottish Power to undertake these actions they would have needed some sort of court authority.

 

I wrote to Scottish Power on her behalf to complain, & gave them my name just in order to communicate with them. They were expressly forbidden to return to the property, & their actions & demands disputed.

 

Their response was to make me the account holder – which I am not, & presumably will make me responsible for their alleged & unsubstantiated arrears – which again I am not responsible for.

 

At no point has she – the account holder & bill payer – ever received any communications, bills, correspondence, or court documents in her name, or served upon her.

 

It would appear that Scottish Power has obtained court documents permitting their behaviour, but in someone else’s name, plus they could only have done so by duping the magistrate & misleading the court.

 

This means that their actions were unlawful & they committed criminal damage & trespass.

 

At this point the account holder had in fact paid £1000+ towards her ongoing dual fuel usage.

 

Demands for money have been made by Scottish Power, but no exact figure has ever been substantiated or agreed, as I believe all of their bills to be estimations.

 

In spite of being forbidden to, Scottish Power returned & trespassed once again on the property in order to reset one of the meters.

 

For every £10 loaded onto the gas meter, £7 is deducted for their alleged debt.

 

The installation of these prepayment meters means that the account holder cannot leave Scottish Power & is effectively trapped in their clutches.

 

It has been over eight weeks from my original letter of complaint.

 

All I have received from them thus far is a computer generated acknowledgement of my original complaint, plus 2 more computer generated letters stating they are investigating.

 

We wish to make a formal complaint about Scottish Powers behaviour, which we believe to be unlawful, criminal, and an abuse of power.

 

I am acting with the full knowledge & approval of the account holder, who wishes to remain anonymous, for now, because she is heavily pregnant & does not deserve any further stress & upset caused to her by Scottish Power’s actions.

 

We ask that you look into this as a matter of urgency.

 

Mr Dxxx xxx

Ms Exxxx Sxxx.

Edited May 1, 2016 by honeybee13
Name removed.

[honeybee13]

Hello and welcome to CAG.

 

I've removed your name at the bottom of the post above. We don't need it in order to advise, and it might be better for you to keep this anonymous.

 

My best, HB

[Vauban]

So since you moved into the property in early 2014, how much have you been paying for your gas and electricity usage? You've said yoou partner had paid £1000 over the period (a little over 2 years?) - but how did they manage that if SP didn't have her account details? Sorry if I've misunderstood something.

[dx100uk]

so daz is simular to the Mr DXXX living there at present....?

 

 

why have they only gotestimated readings?

have you not been giving readings?

[BankFodder]

I understand from you that there is no one at that property called Daz – or nothing like it.

 

Have a look at this recent article about the pigs ear that ScottishPower make their business http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36137005 .

They seem to be almost as bad as Npower – and as bad as Vodafone.

 

Have a look at this thread about another story of wrongful obtaining of a warrant of entry et cetera.

 

I expect that you will find others on this forum as well.

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?185370-Warrant-of-Entry&p=1995721&viewfull=1#post1995721

 

The first thing is you shouldn't start standing on the legalistic's of it all. Your being far too formal and this is part of the reason why you are getting into trouble. He been receiving incorrectly addressed correspondence which you know is from the supplier that you are trying to deal with.

 

Very righteous, of course, to say that you not allowed to open the menu send them back – but actually you shouldn't have bothered. You should have opened them. Then you would know what was happening.

 

Also, you would have copies of all the correspondence say you have good evidence of the mismanagement of your account by ScottishPower.

 

As it is, it seems that you have nothing.

 

Also, you have made another serious mistake – you have been dealing with the utility company – or any other company for that matter – on the telephone and without recording the call. So therefore you have tried hard to open an account with ScottishPower. You have dealt with somebody who clearly wasn't understanding what was going on and yet you have no evidence of it.

 

You need to start sorting out your own approach if you are going to survive at all in the consumer world. Read our customer services guide and implement the advice there and start recording all your calls. This is extremely important. Secondly, if you receive any more mail addressed to this person – Daz - then start opening it and see what they have to say. Keep everything.

 

There are two things which you are going to need to do is a matter of urgency. The first is that you're going to have to send an SAR to ScottishPower and get all the data they hold on you in any form including telephone records, screenshots, correspondence both internal and external, memoranda – everything.

 

Of course the funny thing is that because they have the account in the wrong name, they may refuse to respond to you on the grounds that they have no data on you, but they only have data on somebody called Daz and that because of data protection laws, they are not allowed to reveal it to you. However, if this happens to be the response that that will be helpful to you as well because it will show even more that they have been acting completely negligently.

 

I'm still assuming that your partner's name is not – Daz.. Please will you clarify this point. It is very important.

 

The second thing you will need to do is to phone up the court and explain the situation that a warrant has been incorrectly obtained against you and you wish to complain to them about the applicant – ScottishPower and you want to know how to do this.

 

Let me say that I have been looking through the material on this forum and also on the Internet and I can't seem to find the answer – so if you find the answer would be very grateful if you posted up here because it would be useful for many other people because the problem you are experiencing at the hands of inept utility companies and sloppy magistrates is something that is suffered by many people.

 

Send the SAR straightaway. They have 40 days to respond. In the meantime start doing your research about complaining to the magistrates about the warrant. If you are lucky, there will be a way to bring the complaint and for ScottishPower to come to court and to explain what on earth they were doing. There will be a good start and a good beginning to possibly bringing an action against them and asking for compensation.

 

Also, after you have read our customer services guide, start taking steps to get the call recorder installed, make sure you know how to use it and then start calling ScottishPower and have lots of conversations with various people in the customer services department and start finding out what they know or what they think they know. You are very likely to get useful admissions recorded and which you will be able to use them at some point in the future. Plan on having several conversations with them so that you speak to various customer service reps and you will find that you will probably get a variety of different stories. Of course, it will be especially interesting if they do know who you are and they do have you down as the account holder because that will show that there negligence in applying for the warrant is even more serious than it appears to be at the moment.

 

Do you know who the previous occupier was? Maybe it is the person called Daz. If it is, then maybe you could try and trace that person.

 

When you have taken all this action and when you have the results of the data disclosure then come back here

[BankFodder]

Incidentally, I have suddenly realised that you have also attempted to expressly forbid them from entering your property.

 

I'm very sorry but this is a bit naive and has absolutely no effect at all on anybody. This is the kind of over formalistic approach which will simply leave you getting angry and will have absolutely no effect. Same kind of approach is refusing to open letters from ScottishPower simply because their address to the wrong person – when you know that ScottishPower are probably trying to contact you.

 

I think you have to be a bit more relaxed in your attitude and make sure that the kind of action you do take against them and to protect yourself is meaningful and effective rather than adhering to some sense of "principle"