My 77 year old mother who lives alone gets her electricity from Scottish Power/Manweb.
Last Friday they rang her at 8.00 PM to ask her if she would mind doing a meter reading for them. They used her password so the call was genuine.
This morning she phoned me in a terrible state, her normal quarterly bill is around £40 and she has just received one for over £342.00 .
I managed to calm her down and promised to visit ASAP and sort it out.
I have just been round and found that she has a newish meter with a digital readout. As with most meters it is not in that easy to see, she has obviously read it incorrectly and given them the figure 9835, it should have been 4835.
Mistaking a digital 4 for a 9 is very easy for anyone regardless of age.
I phoned Scottish Power, gave them the correct reading and left them in no doubt of my displeasure at this occurence ( very politely mind).
I dread to think what could have happened if this had been someone more frail than my mother.
I don't know what you think about this but to my mind it is a dreadful way to conduct a business.