Scottish Power

We had a salesman from Scottish Power on the doorstep last week. Of course he didn't say that's what he was. He claimed that he has investigating reports that people "were on the wrong tariff".

He also claimed that Scottish Power were responsible for supply of gas in our area (they're not) but despite that he didn't know who we were buying our gas and electricity from now. He was very keen to see our bill to find out. It soon became clear that this was just an attempt to con us into switched to Scottish Power so we sent him on his way.

I wrote about this in a posting to the milton-news mailing list which I run for the village.

Today a villager turned up on the doorstep. He had had a Scottish Power salesman come to see him too and after inviting him in and listening to his spiel he had told the salesman what he was paying now. He then agreed to switch to the Scottish Power tariff because he was quoted lower prices. Sounds fine so far doesn't it?

But here's where it gets unpleasant. The salesman failed to leave written figures for the tariff he was being switched to (which he should have done) but the villager noted them down and he phoned up Scottish Power to confirm the prices. The person he spoke to didn't recognise the prices he had been quoted at all and told him the actual prices he would be charged on the tariff he'd signed up to.

Here they are:

The "DD" and "1/4" heading are for paying by direct debit or quarterly bill. But don't worry too much about the detail. What matters is the figures he was quoted and how they stack up. For a start the format. They're to only one decimal place whereas Scottish Power's real tariff is to two or three decimal places. They're also significantly under the real rates, especially for electricity on the standard tariff.

I can only conclude that he was making them up as he went along ensuring that each was less than what the villager was paying now.

This is a retired gentlemen who luckily had enough sense to double check the figures with Scottish Power. Now he's cancelled his transfer request and is waiting for Scottish Power management to phone him before he refers it to trading standards.

Frankly I think he should have done that already. It's appalling that this sort of thing is still going on and that people are being preyed upon by dishonest salesmen this way.