| Non-motoring > Scottish Power | Miscellaneous |
| Thread Author: Manatee | Replies: 9 |
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New Tue 4 Aug 20 18:29
Scottish Power - Manatee
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Perhaps you bang your head on walls for fun. Maybe nothing excites you more than the prospect of hair shirt and chains, self-flagellation, fasting to near starvation and self-castration. But however much you think you want to suffer, don't get involved with Scottish Power. I called them last Wednesday to ask them to remove the gas meter from my uninhabitable property. This is a necessary step before the gas transporter SGN will permanently disconnect my gas supply so I can demolish the house. It's Scottish Power's responsibility to deal with this meter removal, as the last supplier. I spent almost the entire afternoon last Wednesday trying to persuade them this is the case. None of them agreed, but none knew what to do. I was put on hold, passed around, and eventually gave up and emailed them. We have exchanged numerous emails including over the weekend. They eventually told me I must call UK Power Networks. I told them that UKPN do not do gas. They insisted. I called UKPN. They told me gas is nothing to so with them. SP told me to call National Grid and gave me a number. That turned out to be the emergency gas leak number, who told me to get off the line if I didn't have a gas leak. I said I could arrange one if it helped but they weren't amused. I consulted SP again. They said I should definitely call NG. I found my own number. I called NG again, this time they gave me another number, which when I rang it was answered 'Cadent'. Cadent is a gas transporter. But not my gas transporter. More detective work revealed that NG has been split into at least two parts, one of which is National Grid Metering. I rang them up yesterday. They are coming to remove my gas meter on Monday - hooray! Meanwhile - SP has reopened my previously closed gas account, estimated my non-existent gas usage since the house fire last year, and conjured up a bill for £1,084 of gas that they invite me to make arrangements to pay. They have also sent me a letter declaiming GOOD NEWS - my direct debit shall be reduced from £97 to £47! (I haven't been direct debited for this account for over a year.) I am also arranging with UKPN a site supply for the rebuild. UKPN insisted that I must contact SP about the electricity meter. I have just spent 105 minutes on the phone discussing this and the gas bill, which has now somehow reduced itself to £174. The reading remains the same as the one I gave them 14 months ago following which they sent me a final bill and a refund of my credit balance. I feel as if someone has put LSD in my tea. I don't shout at the people. They are presumably just trying to earn their money and pay their bills but SP clearly does not have the resources, the training, the systems, the motivation to do anything properly except send the bills out and collect money. Meanwhile I still need the connection to the main removed. This costs c. £1,000 with the gas transporter SGN. But until you order and pay, they won't give you a date - they say something like 8-14 weeks (I was thinking about a fortnight). They also say that because of COVID they haven't done anything since March and propose first to replan all the held-over work. They expect somebody might be able to contact me in 3 weeks. You can potentially get your own contractor to do this but it can cost a lot more. A lot of this is standard apparently. My project manager (no wonder he didn't volunteer to sort this out) claims he had a client who arranged a supply that involved some hole digging with highways' permission, a connection to the main supply and meter installation. The fool arranged for this to take place on the same day. The hole diggers were to come early on, the gang to do the connection late morning, and the meter installer after that. The connection gang came first, but went off to another job as the hole hadn't been dug. Then the hole diggers came and dug the hole. The meter installer came next, but couldn't fit the meter as there was no supply. The connection gang never came back that day. The client now had the hole, so the following day he concentrated on rearranging the supply connection and the meter installation. While he was doing this, the gang who had dug the hole came back and filled it in, as planned. Now - who should I ask to provide my site supply? |
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New Tue 4 Aug 20 19:20
Scottish Power - smokie
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"SP clearly does not have the resources, the training, the systems, the motivation to do anything properly" This is the feeling I get about a small handful of out-of-the-ordinary problems I have had over the past few years. Latest is my Virgin Media picture being sometimes pixelated ( - intermittent doesn't help!!). When it happened, it happened on both TiVos, so was a problem outside the house in my money. Every time I called them, after the 30+ minute wait, I'd have to go through the same process - explain everything (as they seemed too lazy to look up any notes), turn one box off and on (10 minute reboot time), wiggle wires, signal test etc. Then eventually they'd send an engineer. I had maybe 5 engineers during lockdown. Each came and checked the signal levels, 2 of them cut off all the plugs and re-did them, two re-did the box outside my house, none of them fixed it. I even had to have a new TiVo box, which is massively inconvenient as you lose all your recorded programmes and your settings, which the box learns over time Eventually one of the engineers, Chris, asked us if any local neighbours had the problem. Unfortunately for him someone had set up a social network for our immediate street surroundings during lockdown so we asked - and sure enough they did!! So said he'd ask his mate, a network engineer, to take a look. This seemed to be off the record as he gave me his number and asked me to communicate through that, rather than by calling in. The chap called in one day and said he'd replaced an amp in the box in the road, but let Chris know if it still wan't better. It wasn't, so Chris let him know, upon which he went to the next bozx and did something else. It is now quite a bit better but still has occasional problems, but Chris no longer responds to my texts. And of course if I call it in there will be no records of these last actions and I'll be back to square 1. I had the feeling that properly experienced techs are few and far between, and they are not prepared to let them out to look at customer problems. All the other people just follow scripts and flow charts and aren't able to comprehend anything slightly out of the ordinary, and aren't trained to listen and understand or react appropriately to useful data coming from the customer. The problem is that I keep trying to find a decent (and hopefully cheaper) alternative to Virgin but really there doesn't seem to be one that does what we want. |
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New Wed 5 Aug 20 08:46
Scottish Power - R.P.
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| SP were notoriously crap when I worked for CAB - the energy ombudsman had a dedicated line for them. They were, generally, awful |
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New Wed 5 Aug 20 09:49
Scottish Power - Manatee
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I was with them for years at the old address - no bother of course when you stay on the conveyor belt. That said we were on a day/night tariff for most of that time when I had specifically opted for single tariff. It didn't make any material difference to our bills so I just left it. The problems arise if you need any customer service, or even any sense out of them. I was an hour and a half on the phone yesterday again, most of it on hold while being transferred to somebody else who didn't know what to do. At some point they must have got ris of all the people who knew what they were doing, because they just can't find anybody. |
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New Wed 5 Aug 20 12:29
Scottish Power - bathtub tom
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| I find an email to the CEO helps speed things along: andrew.ward@scottishpower.com |
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New Thu 6 Aug 20 09:59
Scottish Power - Manatee
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| Thanks bt |
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New Fri 7 Aug 20 07:35
Scottish Power - R.P.
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| We've had intermittent power cuts over the last few weeks. This has been traced to the local network. We had a hand delivered letter yesterday. Two pager explaining how the local wildlife have caused them. The main finger of blame was towards the crows, the letter included a photo of some crows swarming around a pole. |
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New Fri 7 Aug 20 09:49
Scottish Power - CGNorwich
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Two pager explaining how the >> local wildlife have caused them. The main finger of blame was towards the crows, the >> letter included a photo of some crows swarming around a pole. >> Yes it’s a well known phenomenon. The crows fly around the poles for hours in tight circles. Sometimes known as short circuiting .......... They can disappear in a flash though. |
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New Fri 7 Aug 20 10:17
Scottish Power - Manatee
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Ha! a likely story. Had an interesting discussion with UK Power Networks yesterday. I'm ordering a site supply for the building project. They were extraordinarily helpful. Told me to 'move' the supply rather than order a new one, and that instead of doing another move of the supply from the site kiosk to the house when its finished I can leave the kiosk in the garden and get my electrician to put in a sub-main to the house which will presumably save some dosh. |
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New Fri 7 Aug 20 12:04
Scottish Power - Bromptonaut
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>> The main finger of blame was towards the crows, the >> letter included a photo of some crows swarming around a pole. Alison Johnson who, together with her husband set up the Country House Hotel Scarista House on Harris and detailed it in her book A House by the Shore, tells a similar story. They would get a scheduled power cut every now and then to allow removal of crows (Hoodies?) nests from the lines bringing power over the mountains from Lewis. Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Fri 7 Aug 20 at 12:06
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