Fraud On Energy Bill And Scottish Power Has No Fraud Department To Deal With

[OldChestNuts]

We had a fraudster who claimed to have moved into our new business premises in Oct 2023. This came to our attention beacause there was a new customer joining letter from Scottish Power and addressed to a fake company at our address.

Now we still get bills payment demand addressed to the fake company demanding payment and will be passed onto debt collection agent.

We already informed Scottish Power customer service by emails and telephone calls. Non of these channels results in any resolution to stop the demand of payment. 

We had reported to the Police and Fraud Action and OFGEM. None of these resolve the issue. 

What do we do next? Instruct a solicitor to take Scottish Power to court and resolve it by the law of the country? 

[barry1010]

When I problems with Scottish Power a few years ago the Ombudsman came down hard on them, they were very supportive to me.

I am struggling to see how SP is benefitting.  Are they being paid twice for the same amount of electricity?

Do you know an agent signed this fraudulent company up? How much do they earn per referral?

I signed up for them online.

 

[barry1010]

What details have you got for this company?  Is it a limited company or just a sole trader?

[wolf63]

I have only skimmed through your post so I may have missed something.

Have you been communicating with Scottish Power by email, phone or mail?

In this situation, mail would now be best.

I feel that this is just incompetence and nothing else. 

The Police should be looking to check the persons who created the new fuel account.

 

 

[237SJ]

Have you put a strongly worded review of the company on Trustpilot?  I trashed my useless utilities company on there and that was the only way my problem was resolved because they read it.  Before that I had been dealing with their hopeless foreign call centres.  I've just looked and Scottish Power seem to respond to some complaints.  Publicly shaming them can be the only way to sort out problems with some of these companies.  Sounds like a computer is just generating correspondance with you without anyone putting any thought into the issue.

[OldChestNuts]

@wolf63

"The Police should be looking to check the persons who created the new fuel account."

The police was not interested when we reported to them in Nov 2023. 

 

@bary1010 - The company is a sole trader, the welcoming letter has the name, account number for payment (obviously fake thats why Scottish Power couldn't debit the money) and mobile number. ALl fake I suspect.

SP will benefit if I just pay up the £400..

[OldChestNuts]

@247sj - that is a good idea on Trustpilot. 

[newmodarmy]

A lot of those posts weren't there when I started replying.

[barry1010]

Just to clarify, is Scottish Power demanding money from you or the fraudulent company using your address?

[newmodarmy]

Yes I can't work out whether it's an unauthorised switch ( albeit to same supplier) or whether oldchestnut's address is being billed for 2 different accounts with different meters.

[barry1010]

Same meter serial numbers on both bills

[OldChestNuts]

I had posted on the Trust Pilot and see if they will reply:

A Shamble and incompetent company that will not respond to Fraud

We are a customer of Scottish Power for the last 15 years. We received a welcoming signed up letter from Scottish Power addressed to a fraudulent company in Nov 2023. We notified Scottish Power via emails and telephone from Nov 2023 and now it is March 2024.

Erroneous transfer should be resolved within 20 working days according to their website/OFGEM. But now its more than 5 months!

We had received bills payment addressed to the fraudulent company. And at the same time we are still in contract with Scottish Power and bills are being paid on the same meter.

We communicated to you over 50 hours on the phone and promised after promised that the matter will be resolved. But none of the promises were resulted in resolving the matter. Your email customer service resides in India had not took any actions to resolve the matter, including your Fraud Prevention team. I sent them an email in Nov 2023 and I received a reply in Jan 2024! How this long period could possibly stops any scam or fraud activities. No action was taken from your company.

My summary of experience with Scottish Power are as follows:
1. A shamble incompetent company,
2. Uses lazy customer service that does not fulfil their duty, they make false promises and no reply to emails,
3. Unprofessional customer service (call centre in UK I believe) put down the phone when I asked for a complaint reference number. So I can't complain,
4. The only way to get a complaint raised was via OFGEM.
5. I also went onto your Facebook page and asked for escalation to a senior management to look into resolving the matter. No reply when I requested this.

I hope Scottish Power and potentially their new customers are aware of how shamble this company is. They can't operate a business like this trying extract more money from your customer by issuing fraudulent bills and sending threating letters demanding money, when we are the fraud victim.

[newmodarmy]

I find that strange but if that really is the case he should just pay his own

[newmodarmy]

I find that strange but if that really is the case he should just pay his own

[OldChestNuts]

@newmodarmy

It was an unauthorised transfer by the fraudster.

I questioned Scottish Power over this, they said they did not asked for any identies when they signed up the fraudster. The reason given was because our premises (meter ID) has good payemnt record with lots of credits in the account.

So please don't have too much credits in youtr account as this will aid the fraudster to sign up without ID check.

 

[barry1010]

My advice would be to change supplier now and cease communication.

[barry1010]

Why would the fact the previous customer had a good payment record influence their decision re the next customer? It doesn't make sense

[newmodarmy]

It's hard to believe they are sending 2 identical bills for the same meter and are expecting both to be paid. 

[Auntypoll]

How can this be an erroneous transfer? The account has not been transferred into another's name as you said you are still getting normal bills for your usage. Where is the electricity going? Is your MPAN electricity reference number the same on both bills? 

[ladybirder]

Have you contacted Citizens Advice?

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/legal-system/finding-free-or-affordable-legal-help/

[Auntypoll]

And to open an account they would have had to provide a final meter reading which would have meant getting access to your premises. You say the telephone number and account number to open the fake account were false, how do you know that ?