Scottish Power is discriminating against thousands of households north of the Border by chasing debts even though equivalent customers in England have had theirs written off, MSPs said yesterday. The supplier has waived the £600,000 it is owed by 14,000 households in England because it is not responsible for their meters and therefore cannot be sure every effort has been made to contact the households about retrospective charges. More than 400,000 customers of the supplier pay for their electricity through pre-payment meters. When prices go up the meters must be altered to reflect the increased cost but where it is impossible to recalibrate the meters in time, the energy company will back-charge the customer. However in Scotland and Merseyside, where the firm has its own engineers, 10,000 households are being chased for outstanding debt. The average debt is £35, meaning £350,000 is outstanding. Yesterday Jackie Baillie, co-convener of Holyrood’s cross-party on household debt, put a motion before the Scottish Parliament calling on ScottishPower to scrap the debt for all its customers. “It is inherently unfair,” she said. “If you are a ScottishPower customer in Glasgow why should you be treated any differently to a ScottishPower customer in Newcastle?” She said it was up to the power company to keep meters up-to-date when prices rose. “People are making real choices about whether they heat their homes or put food on the table,” she said. Graham Kerr, of Energywatch Scotland, pointed out that people using pre-payment meters were often on low incomes or elderly. He said households could be unaware of a price rise for years, meaning they were landed with hundreds of pounds worth of debt when the power company finally got in touch. “It is discriminating against customers who have meters and what is worse is it is discriminating against local customers,” he said. However, ScottishPower claims each of the 10,000 customers in question had been contacted ten times in the last year using letters, outbound calls and numerous visits. A spokesman pointed out that, where it was the fault of the company, 3,000 debts had been written off in Scotland and Merseyside. It was only in cases where the company could be sure every effort had been made to contact the customer that the debt was outstanding.

Scottish Power has 5.2 million customers in the UK. Of these, more than 400,000 use pre-payment meters, which have to be updated every time there is a change in price. The company back-charges customers when its staff cannot get to the meter before the price change. Npower and Powergen also try to recoup the money. However, Scottish Hydro Electric, Scottish Gas and EDF energy do not apply back charges.ScottishPower is currently swapping its old meters for new ones which will update automatically.

Related posts...

• June 22, 2010 -- UK Business Energy Prices: (3)
  A new survey carried out by the Economist Intelligence Unit has revealed that over 80% of British firms expect energy and fuel prices to rise sharply and almost 50% have great concern that the UK coul...
• February 21, 2010 -- Identifying a Half Hour Meter: (0)
  How to find out if you have a half hourly meter – So how do you know if you have a half hour meter?  It’s actually quite straight forward, and all you will need to find this out is a recent copy o...
• February 10, 2010 -- UK Business Gas Prices: (0)
  Business Gas Prices can be difficult to understand, as there are many different types of pricing structures available.  You could simply ring around and obtain gas prices direct from suppliers, but it...
• February 7, 2010 -- Oil Prices Back To $70 Range: (0)
  Oil prices plunged in a busy trading session on Friday, triggering big losses across the commodities markets, as investors went back to buying into the US dollar.  Crude oil prices did have a partial ...
• February 5, 2010 -- CRC Business Lights: (1)
  The era of the 'on-all-night' illuminated high street could end, the Environment Agency is predicting. The agency says new rules will force businesses to switch off lights and displays at night to mee...
• February 3, 2010 -- Bglobal Smart Meter Deal: (3)
  Bglobal Plc said it has signed a new agreement to supply and install smart meters for British Gas Business during 2010. The contract value is anticipated at more than £12 million. In addition, the com...

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

CAPTCHA Code *