SSE Muppets - RANT

[Drawmer]

I received a letter today from Southern Electricity.
It told be that it was time for my annual direct debit review.

Based on what they expected me to use before my next annual review in July2012 they recommended that I increased my monthly DD to £40.
Here's how they worked it out:

Current Monthly DD is £35.00
Predicted balance on my account at the end of the next annual review if no changes are made £44.90
Number of payments to next review 9
New recommended monthly DD £40.00

The new payments are based on my previous usage, their new prices and the predicted balance at next review.

I didn't need to do anything, they'd just up the payments.

Well that's bloody good of them.

I've written to ask them:
1. How have they worked out my projected use?
2. How much of my existing CREDIT balance of £327 have they taken into account?
3. How exactly do they expect their customers to understand their demand for more money when they haven't told them the assumptions used?
4. How much they thought my usage would be lowered by my PV installation
5. How fair is it that they want LOTS of my money in advance, when they take 90 days to pay me for my generation?

Muppets.


and... breathe

[desperate]

Drawmer, I sympathise, we have a similar situation, after reducing our consumption with the solar and WBS they eventually reduced our DD from 85 down to 25, but we are nearly 800 in credit, and increasing. After a phone call to request a refund, they clearly thought I was fiddling the meters and sent a numpty round to check. After agreeing that our consumption had actually reduced.................................still no bloomin refund

I am on the point of unleashing my solicitor, they will be in serious trouble, she can be VERY scary.

Whatever happened to "the gas and electricity board"

Good luck with your situation

Desperate

[guydewdney]

change to good energy. one call, meter reading in had, cheque / bank transfer done. No stress, no idiots, all uk call 'centres'. before switching, contact me and we both get a 25 quid freebie intro bonus.

[dhaslam]

There is a sort of logic to it.   They may be looking at the previous winter's usage  relative to the equivalent summer period.  Also they probably want to be reasonably conservative  because customers don't like to have arrears built up.     

[regen]

Hi Paul,

Glad I am not the only one having problems with this lot.  In July 2010 after 10 years as a customer my statements just stopped coming.  7 phone calls three emails and a letter later they finally agreed there was a problem when they ran out of excuses.  I even managed to extract 50 quid from them as a token jesture of their incompetance which would be added to my account! I was well chuffed when a short statement arrived with no mention of the 50 quid and no meter readings to tell me they would continue to take £56 per month and carry forward my credit balance of £293 to my next bill.

Sadly my experience of swalec with regard to microgeneration is no better.

Regen

[Drawmer]

My beef with then is twofold:
Firstly because they failed in doing a proper calculation for my account,
but more importantly because they are sending these letters out based on assumptions that aren't declared.
It isn't a transparent process, and I think it will confuse many customers, particularly those that can't/won't do their own figuring.

[Moxi]

Hi Drawmer,

You have my sympathy as with many others i have trouble with my electric supplier making apparent unfounded assumptions and being quick to demand but slow to reimburse.

The very best way to deal with it after your first exchange is to write to the company, copied to the ombudsman with the words,

            "I am writing to complain............." followed by the details of your problem.

The use of the word complain means the company has to register it on the complaints log that they are measured against by the ombudsman and they therefore rush to deal with it as they are also measured on the time taken to resolve the compaint.

I was told this a number of years ago and it works well.

I hope it helps you to get a quick resolution too.

Moxi

[Billy]

10000000 customers each in credit by £200 is a lot of interest even when the rate is small.  Enough to give a nice little bonus me thinks.

billy

 

[JohnS]

Sorry about your problems with SSE.

I get good service with nPower.  Each August they review the usage, based on actual amounts in the previous year and refund any credit balance automatically.  I give a meter reading at the end of July to help them although this year they also sent someone round to read them in mid-August.  

Last year I managed to give them the July 2009 instead of July 2010 gas meter reading which caused a large credit to be refunded and a small projected direct debit based on nil usage.  I phoned them to point out my error and they did not want the money back, they were quite happy to collect it monthly over the year.

At last their microgeneration team is moving to bank credits instead of cheques.

John

[brackwell]

Any troubles -just tell them you are reporting them to Offgem and then see them move -they dont like black marks.

Ken

[Drawmer]

Ooohh they really are muppets. Here's the reply to my complaint of the 1st November (3 weeks to reply):


Dear Mr Drawmer,

I am writing with regards to your recent complaint with ourselves.  Firstly please allow me to apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused you.   

I would like to confirm how we have come to the calculations on the letter we sent on the 27th October 2011.  Your current payments were £35.00 per month.  We used your previous usage including our new prices and predicted that your balance at your review date in May 2012 would be £44.90.  This would mean that your direct debit would need to be increased by £5 per month to cover this balance for the next 9 months, increasing your payments to £40 per month.  We have now decreased your payments back down to the £35.00 per month as requested on your call on the 31st October 2011. This just reiterated the original 'explanation' I have asked again to see the calculations.

I spoke to you on the 22nd November 2011 in reference to the direct debit review letter process and advised that I would only be able to pass on your feedback on how we can improve our process and I can not commit to changing this process.   

In reference to Mirco Generation taking 60 days to send you your credit they advised that it can take between 4 to 8 weeks to calculate and sent the refund.  I can confirm that the refund was actioned on the 11th August 2011 which was the amount due for the 30th June 2011 readings and that this was only a 41 day period. If you are referring to a separate period please let me know by return. Yes but the payment wasn't actually made until the 30th

I would also like to take this opportunity to inform you of our complaint handling procedure which can be found on our website or a paper copy can be sent upon request.

http://www.sourthern-electric.co.uk/HelpAndAdvice/ComplaintsProcedure This is a gem - click on the link and tell me where the procedure is and how to spell Southern!

If I do not hear back from you regarding this matter within 10 working days I will close my files.


I trust this is to your satisfaction and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours sincerely

[regen]

Hi Drawmer,

I now have my own personal complaint person at SSE - she rings me regularly but has yet to sort anything- trouble is I have now gone from no statements for over a year to statements arriving by every post (Slight exageration) and the most recent one always contradicts the previous one and they all bypass my 'Complaints advisor'  The latest missive states that they will carry forward my balance of £543.97 as payment towards future bills but that my SO should remain at £56 per month. Also included was my annual electricty statement - 'In the coming year we estimate your costs will be £329.46' so by this time next year i will be nearly a grand in credit!!
 And i still dont know if these figures include the 50 quid for giving me so much grief or the fact they have removed 13 x £56 for the last 2 years instead of 12 x 56!!

Regen

[Ki Lo Watt]

Hi Drawmer,

When I encountered the old scam of upping direct debits and running up a large credit balance I just cancelled my direct debit. This generates a response that the payment cannot be taken etc. At that point I write to the supplier and explain that I have experienced “issues” with my bank account and I am working to rectify the problem. I have been able to sting this out for five months at which point I issue new account details to the supplier for direct debits. They usually want to up payments but you say “I have looked at switching etc”. I found this got back to the original payments and cleared my balance.

Remember it's your money and you are in CREDIT not ARREARS

[Drawmer]

My problem with SSE is not to just to do with my account.
I'm more pizzed off with the fact that they seem incapable of presenting a clear calculation of how they got to their request for more more money. I'm happily numerate, but it should be a requirement that if they send out a demand for increased payments, then the recipient should be provided with the means of checking SSE's working.

Strangely enough, when I received a similar calculation from SSE for my gas bill; it clearly set out my past gas usage, prediction and hence projected account balance, which was fine.
The electricity one just says 'we've looked at your previous usage' etc.

[wesnet]

Not just SSE try British Gas in September my payment review said I was in credit to the tune of £400 and that they would reduce my monthly payment from £101 to £13 from November. Yesterday, having paid only one month at the lower rate, we got another letter saying another review had been carried out, and our balance was £375, and our monthly payment would now need to go up to £112 a month  . This despite the fact that our gas usage is lower than last year, so far.

My wife phoned up, and got a very nice girl, eventually, who had a look at the account and agreed that it should remain at £13. My wife's suggestion that we didn't have this trouble when it was all nationalised (which we do remember), didn't go down too well, but the nice young lady had obviously been trained in soothing irate customers, so assume this is a fairly regular occurrence.

We are loath to change suppliers, because it doesn't seem as if any of them are any better.

John