DON'T get me started on Scottish Power! We signed up to their online billing service and they asked us to send in details of how much we used each month so they could set the dd tariff. We did this but they chose to ignore it (they say they lost it) and have, for the last year, charged us £18/month for dual fuel (ie both gas and electricity). We've had a lot going on so haven't really noticed that this was about 1/3 of the price we used to pay with npower (yes I KNOW we should have been more vigilant but....)but they DID promise us cheaper bills.
Everytime we log on to give a reading we checked the bill and it seemed to be fine, buiding up a bit of a debit balance but nothing to get worked up about, UNTIL this Spring when we find ourselves suddenly owing £560 outstanding!!! No-one contacted us about this or said we owed it so we called them and they basically said, ooh, yes, you owe us that, can you send us a cheque, please?
After months of emails, calls to customer services, letters to the MD etc we eventually got £100 knowcked off the bill and an agreement thatw e could pay in 4 instalmnets. We have also upped our monthly payments to the correct amount. Needless to say as soon as we have paid of the debt it's goodbye Scottish Power.
My gripe with them was (and still is) that they tempt you in with these low prices and promises to be cheaper and then don't tell you that
a) they don't bother setting a realistic tariff.
b) they won't flag up either by email or via a noticeable mechanism on their website whether your payments are seriously out of kilter
c) there is no obvious way to correct your payments anyway - I assumed that THEY would inform US that we needed to pay more!
They're a total bunch of shysters. In our email correspondence they have admitted everything I pointed out to them was their fault but we still have to pay the balance. We gave up arguing in the end.
When we more to our new supplier I want a bill by post and I DON'T want to pay by direct debit. I want to be in control for once.
Grrr.