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SSE have precipitated a complete nonsense. Why am I surprised?
They have, I'm sure, fairly typical piss poor service standards. Any number you call them on takes an hour (if you're lucky) on hold before they connect. The online service only has limited options (i.e. submit meter reading and payments). The online service is never going to unravel their prior cock ups and today it isn't working at all.
We scheduled a smart meter upgrade last year. Months ahead we booked it in. On the day nobody showed. They said they tried and nobody in. Utter b******* and gaslighting to boot.
So we said "thanks for being sh*t, we'll be looking at other suppliers". They pre-emptively closed the accounts and started mailing the address with "to the new occupants" and had set up new accounts; kind of the opposite to what we would ever have wanted. Phone calls ensue to tell them they've cocked up... and they do it again. In total they set up four spurious accounts. In the course of many phone calls the penny finally dropped and they killed off the new accounts.
So all is well, right? Well no.
Those accounts were something we never had control of: no online access; they stopped mailing. They weren't attached to us in any way and they assured us they had all gone away. Except... they hadn't and at least one of them had a balance which they have now referred to a debt collection agency and (after a bad identity theft experience earlier last year) my normally confident and outgoing wife is in tears and despair.
What percentage chance I'm going to get it resolved in today's phone call?
They are terrible.. Go straight to the complaints procedure, and do it all via email you you have an audit trail. Don't waste time and cause yourself more stress by trying to phone them.
There's info on thier complaints procedure on thier website specifying response times etc.. Customer charter or something?
When they inevitably break the rules of thier own complaints procedure then file a complaint with the ombudsman.
The ombudsman won't look at your case until you've exhausted the SSE complaints procedure, or reached a deadlock /impasse.
I had so much time on hold I had enough time to tweet (which seemed to get an amusingly rapid response).
Did finally get through to a customer rep. I was polite but firm that I was making a complaint. They put me on hold and lo... another half hour later the "you're moving house" team pick up the call. If this wasn't the third time of asking I'd conclude an outbreak of moronism but now I think it must be a part of standard process designed to engender despair.
Hell is a place on earth.
I'm only doing this to freshen up my reserve of opprobrium to make the complaint fresh and steaming.
It was their actively training customers to fall for scams that irked me the most.
"Hi I'm calling from SSE, can I speak the account holder?"
"Can you confirm any of the account details so I know you're really from SSE?"
"No."
"Can I call you back on the number on the bill and get through to the relvant department?"
"No."
"Then you can't speak to the account holder."
Then there was the letter for "account holder" with no other details saying "Please pay from now into bank with sort code xxxx, account number yyyy." Then the bill turned up with the old account details on it. And they got snotty that I took to long to pay while trying to work out whether it was another scam!
Email the CEO; details should be online.
If you are a domestic customer, SSE sold their business to OVO in January 2020 (they retained the business customers). You'll need the OVO CEO as the SSE one won't be able to help.
@toby that's exactly the BS
I asked: "what period and what meter readings do these charges relate to because you seem to be quite happily taking meter readings and charging me on another account. I'm concerned to have complete information that I am not being charged double"
Response: ... crickets...
As I said, don't mess about with phones or twitter, they'll just run you round in circles forever.
Follow the formal complaint procedure, and when they drop the ball, go to the ombudsman.
Do it all by email, tell them that you will only respond via email. no phones, no twitter, no ambiguity.
I had a supreme cock-up by SSE after I took possession of a let-out property. They too referred my account to a debt collection agency, it was eventually settled but very stressful. They really are piss poor.
I'd be going to the ombudsman sharpish.
They were also very rubbish on the phone when I called to sort it out, lot heavily laden "sir" and sighing. The debt collection agency were much better!
The ombudsman won't look at the complaint until you've exhausted the companies complaints procedure.
Knowing what they are like, they might well not log your twitter /phone complaint as a formal complaint.
Email them, make sure to say its a formal complaint. Then go from there.
Hasn't TJ got extensive experience of SSE being bloody useless or was that Scottish Power?
Anyway, my experience of SSE is that we moved into a rented flat. The tenant before had never paid a bill so about 3 days after we moved in I got home to find no electric and a meter key shoved in the letterbox. This was on a Friday, the meter was behind a locked door in the communal stairwell and it took until the next Thursday to get a key for it from the building management company.
They then refused to change the meter back to a standard one. Knobs.
They too referred my account to a debt collection agency, it was eventually settled but very stressful
This is hugely irritating, but unless the debt collection agency get a court judgment there is nothing they can do. A good way to deal with them is ask to see a copy of the assignment between them and the supplier (the document that grants them the right to pursue the debt).
IME* more often than not they can't find it, which means they have no legal basis to pursue it.
Or you get the situation I once had with NPower, where they kept sending us bills for the local kebab shop, and despite having been repeatedly told it wasn't us, it was passed to a "debt collection agency". Which was, in fact, just another wholly-owned subsidiary of NPOwer and one which, when I contacted the company secretary, was believed to be dormant! Bunch of utter shysters, the lot of them. That amusing episode ended up with them sending us a cheque for a few hundred pounds, and then starting up chasing for a supposed debt again. We never cashed the cheque but I took great delight in sending them photocopies of it asking why, if we owed them money, had they sent us a cheque?
*15+ years as a litigation solicitor in E&W.
Yeh don't be stressed about debt collection agencies, all they can do is send you strongly worded letters, often in red text.
They are designed to provoke stress and have you enter into some unfavorable agreement and then you will be stuffed. That's how it works.
Only worry if you get a court summons, which you can quickly and easily dismissed by the court as you'll be able to easily prove the dispute.
Give them one chance to fix it.
Then complain, formally.
Then go to ombudsman.
Anything else is just giving them an opportunity to **** up, or do nothing, and adding to your stress.
^this is literally the business model.
OP has already had bother so stage 2 is formal complaint.
I had an issue with SSE when I was unable to pay my electric bill after having a new meter fitted. It went on for over a year of me constantly wanting to pay my bill, they could tell me what I owed them but were unable to process the payment.
I was finally in touch with a woman who must have been important in their customer service department as to when I gave the bloke on the phone her extension number admitted he was shocked that I had it and confessed not many customers get that or get to talk to her but she was absolutely ****ing useless. She lied and failed to call me back three times after arranging dates and times to call me and every time I tried to call her she was conveniently out or in a meeting.
In the end, I spoke to someone from the ombudsman who said I had to give them one final go to rectify the issue so I emailed them stating if they can not rectify the problem can they please send me a letter explaining why I cannot pay my bill so I can forward it to the ombudsman who can then take the matter into their hands.
The following day I had a telephone call from what I can only explain as SSE customer customer service. The gentleman was extremely helpful and explained it would take a couple of days to look into my case and would call me back with a solution. A couple of days later he called back when he said he would and within 45 minutes my issue was sorted. He was very apologetic about the woman who never called me back and I got the impression she was going to get one hell of a bollocking.
In the end, I ended up paying about £30 for over 12 months of electricity but I would have rather not have had the hassle and just been able to pay my bill.
As above SSE were bought by Ovo. Despite many assurances at the time, Ovo are now closing call centres and making lots of staff redundant. There are 222 people losing their jobs in Perth alone.
They are a crappy company and don't give a toss about customers or employees. The chances are the person you are speaking to is doing the job of 3 people and is losing their job soon anyway. Get out whilst you can!
When you do manage to get out I'd recommend avoiding Scottish power who seem to be equally bad, both in my experience in anecdotes from friends and various tales in threads on here.
Then go to ombudsman.
Just to say IME of the Energy Ombudsman they are pretty hopeless.
We had another dispute with a supplier at our new house who, having been given all the direct debit details, didn't actually take any payments, leading to a big bill and lots of shouting.
Anyway, we paid it all off, gave them the DD details again, made sure they'd got them - and exactly the same thing happened again. Account showing as DD active, no o/s charges, but for some reason they just weren't taking the payments.
All manner of bother including threats of disconnection, additional costs etc etc.
The Ombudsman was completely useless and basically said 'you're on your own, sonny'.
So don't pin your hopes on getting it resolved with them, either.
What fun.
Just had an automated customer satisfaction survey call from SSE. The scores were not high.
Currently, the debt collection appears to have been cancelled. The complaint process has started.