Hi, I have an outstanding bill from Scottish Power of £292. This bill is a result of charges incurred between 18 months and 2 years ago. When originally billed, for an old flat I lived in at the time, I queried the charges and requested a full breakdown on a number of occasions. This was not forthcoming and they twice attempted to withdraw these funds from my account. I asked my bank to reverse the charges as there was an ongoing dispute. I then raised a formal complaint with Scottish Power. Scottish Power advised me that they were reviewing my complaint and would get back to me ASAP. I did not hear anything from them for over 18 months until recently when they began sending threatening letters. I again informed them I was awaiting a response to my complaint. They told me this had been closed. They promised to re-open this and once again review. I waited 6 weeks with no response at which point the threatening letters started again. I contacted them via Facebook messenger and was promised the matter would be escalated. Whilst all this is going on they have now generated a new bill for £97 from 17 months ago which they say I also owe. I have also disputed this as they were not my provider at the time (I have already paid British gas for energy for that period) besides, I was of the view that they cannot generate bills for energy used over 12 months ago. Is this correct? To date I have received no call from the complaints team. I have expressed to them via Facebook messenger that this can only be resolved if they take a pro-active approach and stop sending automatically generated letters. I just cant get them to speak with me to resolve the issue! They instead go silent for long periods before re-commencing with the threatening letters. What else can I do to resolve this? Thanks in advance.

When you say wrong side of the road; Are cars permanently parked along the side of this road? Is there a white central line on the road? Was he committed to passing these parked cars when you first noticed him? I have work in insurance claims for 20 years and sometimes these cases are not clear cut.

Hi all, I accepted an offer of employment from a company 3 weeks ago. I agreed a start date and handed my resignation to my current employers. The notice period is 4 week. I received an offer letter along with an attachment for me to sign and return to my new employers: I, Itokuzu, accept the attached offer of employment. …………………………………………………. Signed & Dated I signed this and returned it to them. Three weeks later, i.e. today, my new employers have now contacted me to say the position is no longer available and that the offer of employment is withdrawn! I have already been paid my final wage from my current employer and will cease employment at the end of the week. I have not spoken to them about withdrawing my resignation but they have already found my replacement so assume they will say no. This puts me in an impossible position. I will now be without a job which in my current financial position is a disaster. What recourse do I have against the company that withdrew their offer of employment?? Thanks in advance caggers, Ito.

Thanks. I have been dealing direct with the manufacturer re. repairs. For me to invoke the Sale of Goods Act do I now have to revert to the manufacturer I purchased it from 18 months ago? Can they say that the watch has been replaced, so the watch I now have is nothing to do with them?

I was given a GPS watch as a present for Christmas in 2009. The watch gave me quite a bit of trouble, so I eventually sent it back to the manufacturein November 2010. The manufacturer supplied me with a new replacement watch in November 2010. Now, 8 months later the 2nd watch has completely died on me. My question is this - as the second watch is only 8 months old is it covered by a 1 year warranty, when the purchase date for the original watch was 19 months ago?

I have PM'd Colin with the details necessary to allow him to review my account. I would like to see an end to this without the need for an arbitrator. That though seems unlikely, because there is something very much amiss with the details and records that Scottish Power hold for us and our home. At every juncture there has been confusion as to where we live, who we are, how much energy we have used, how much we owe and, most importantly as far as the current issues are concerned, a record of our previous correspondence. I think I have been reasonable up till now so I will continue to be reasonable for a few more days. I will try to call Scottish Power again, but I am not wasting my phone bill waiting on hold for another 20 odd minutes like I have been doing every other time (once for nearly 40 minutes). If they don't answer after 10 minutes I am hanging up. Hopefully though Colin will come back to me. I will update you again midweek. If I don't have a resolution by Wednesday I will make a final decision on my position. Thanks again. Ito.

Hi guys, Yet another update, and I am afraid it is not good news as far as Scottish Power customer service is concerned. I didn't ever receive my promised call back from them. However, I did receive another bill. This time the bill seems fine. The figures look correct and the amounts paid/owed are ok. I can glean from the bill that we are, as suspected, using less electricity per month than we were previously. We calculate our usage has dropped from circa £60 per month to under £50 per month. As a result we have paid off over £200 of the £700-odd we owe. Good news? Not quite. Instead of a call or letter from Scottish Power apologising for the error(s) or explaining the issues I have now received another letter looking for more money. In this letter they claim to have reviewed my account and that my current payments will not cover ongoing use. As a result they have decided to increase my repayment to £147 per month! Now, this is surprising for two reasons; firstly and most obviously if they had actually reviewed our usage like they say they have they would have noticed a decrease rather than increase. Surely this means the direct debit should be reduced, not increased (not that I want that, of course). Secondly, I have a written agreement from a Scottish Power "Senior Complaints Advisor" agreeing the repayment of £100 per month. The letter goes on to say that I "do not have to do anything" and that the payment will come out of my account on the 25th December. Merry Christmas indeed! I am totally pi**ed off with this now (sorry for the bad language). How can Scottish Power renege on an agreement I made with them less than 6 months ago? Surely this is bordering on unethical? I absolutely do not authorise them to take anymore than £100 from my bank! I would complain, but I have already had a senior complaints advisor look at this so what good will it do me? I haven't once had an apology for any of this hassle (not that I wanted one, but I do now). Sorry for such a long post but I am really annoyed. Bazooka Boo, I am now beginning to think that you may be right about taking it further. Any comments would be hugely appreciated. Itokuzu P.S. Colin, I have PM'd you. I trust if you can get back to me you will do so as a matter of urgency.

Hi Bazooka Boo and Hi Colin, I have spoken to SP twice since I posted on the 29th. On the first occasion they said that the account number I provided them (from the bill) was in fact for another apartment within our building. They said that they do not have an account open for our apartment. This is the same problem I had when I called them a few years back! The second time (when they called me back) they said that they had no idea about how the bill was calculated and that the figures did not make any sense. They could offer no explanation as to why there are two different energy supply numbers on the bill or why the readings are dated 1st Jan 1970. They said they would investigate and revert. This call took place on Nov 30th. I have not heard back from them so will call again after work today and provide you with an update thereafter. Colin, if you still have my details from the last time can you investigate this anomalous bill? Regards, Ito.

Hi all, I have a bit of an update on my problem with Scottish Power; After discussing the matter with Colin on here and also with Scottish Power direct (and after a few false starts where we continually received bills in weird and wonderfully incorrect connotations of our names) we agreed to a repayment plan of £100 per month over 24 months. This was intended to cover £60 usage per month (based on current usage at the time) and an additional £40 monthly repayment of the outstanding amount of £759.79 (although this has bizarrely jumped up to £770 in the bill!) Today, we received our first bill from Scottish Power. If the bill is correct we have used £340.75 worth of electricity from 25th August 2010 until 25th November 2010. We have paid them £400 in this period. So, they say that we have paid £60 towards the debt when we thought we would have paid circa £160 from the £400. Now, within this period we know we have actually used LESS power than ever since we moved in. We have been spending two days away from home every week and have never once had the heating on. We did not think there could be any way that we would be using over the estimated £60 monthly average. Dataserve have been reading the meter every three months for the last 3 years, most recently just over a week ago, so the readings should be correct. The bill states "ACTUAL READING" at the top. The problem is the figures noted in the letter don't make sense. In fact the bill refers to readings and amounts due from the period of 1st Jan 1970 until 1st Jan 1970 (yes, Jan to Jan 1970). There is no explanation as to how they have arrived at the figures and the meter readings simply do not make sense; the start and end readings all say 0. Also, the bill notes two different energy supply numbers... the one on the back is different to the one on the front??? Strangely, the only aspect of the bill we can understand states is "energy use comparison". It says we used 2152kwh by the same period last year, but this year the bill states we used 3666kwh. This simply cannot be the case. It then goes on to say that we have used 3635kWh in the last 12 months, so, Scottish Power say we have used more energy since August (and since we started paying them) than we did in the last 12 months. Suspicious? Yes, we are. So, we are perplexed as to how Scottish Power have arrived at this figure if they have used dataserve readings and we agreed earlier in the year that an average usage cost of £60 per month would be reasonable. This bill and our most recent interaction with Scottish Power has left us flabbergasted. Any comments are welcome. Thanks, Itokuzu.

I am afraid there is very little you can do about the claim at this stage. You will probably find that your insurers have agreed to deal with the third party claim on a without prejudice basis due your alleged lack of co-operation. You could make a complaint about the handling of the claim to your insurers and ultimately the financial ombudsman, but even if your complaint is upheld I think their decision to settle the third party claim will stand. The problem being there is no proof that the other driver hit the brakes suddenly or that the passenger switched seats and drove the vehicle after the accident. 99% of all accident such as this result in the rear vehicle bearing full responsibility. It is not uncommon for damaged to the rear of a vehicle appear minimal but for the repair estimate to be huge (rear bumper impacts tend to cause internal damage, kinking to the quarter panels, misalignment issues, etc). In a lot of road traffic accidents it is not what happened that is important, it is what you can prove. Sadly in this instance the balance of probability is in favour of the other driver.

Typically shambolic claims handling by Esure (Sheila's Wheels). They should have been chasing this TCF crowd for a report long before now. When speaking to them make sure you ask to be provided with written details of their formal complaints procedure. The Financial Services Authority set extremely strict deadlines for insurance complaints, and they must comply. Advise them that you are far from satisfied with their claims handling service, or TCF, and insist that settlement deadlines be set. Also, it's always worth telling them that you feel your policy excess should be waived as compensation for the delay and stress that this has caused! Ito.

The only thing I can think of is that they decided to waive your policy excess before they realised that the third party insurers were disputing liability. If they did waive the excess and now agree 50/50 they might ask for 50% of the excess back. However, I think that is highly unlikely. Other than that scenario they cannot ask for any money back from you. You made a claim on the foot of your comprehensive policy as is your right. That is why you insured comprehensively rather than just third party, fire & theft. The worst thing that can happen is that if they do not get a full recovery your No Claims Discount will be affected when you renew next year. Incidentally if the other driver rearended your daughter they would need a very good reason to settle on a 50/50 basis. The vast (and I do mean vast) majority of rear-end accidents settle fully in favour of the front car. To protect the NCD you should press them to seek full recovery.

Colin, I have emailed the online complaints email address. I would be obliged if you could confirm receipt. Regards, Ito.

Your claim is genuine so you have nothing to worry about with regard the second visit. I know Cunningham Lindsay very well. Some of the biggest insurers in the country sub contract loss adjusting work to them. They turn over huge volumes. They have probably just lost the paperwork! Loss adjusters also sometimes conduct a second visit at the insurers request just to ensure the details provided the second time are comparable to the first and also, bizarrely enough, sometimes even just to provide an opinion to the insurer as to whether you look like you could have afforded the ring in the first place. More often that not though its just because they made a pigs ear of the first report! It sounds like the first loss adjusters comments have unsettled you but as I said early he has no authority to comment at all. If as you say the ring is specifically insured and cover is in order they have to pay the claim. It should just boil down to negotiating a settlement figure.

This is a bit unusual but I have known it to happen before for various reasons, you should press your insurer for an explanation as to why another adjusters report is required. I have never heard of an insurer making exclusions for items purchased abroad. Did you have the ring specifically insured? Some insurers insist that higher value items are added to the policy on top of normal cover. They may refuse to cover an item, or apply a ceiling to the settlement, if no additional cover existed. NOTE** The original loss adjuster was talking out of turn, and more than likely talking nonsense too. He should not be discussing matters with you as he has no authority to settle your claim or otherwise... his job is to provide an assessment for the insurers consideration.