All entries for Sunday 08 December 2013

Switch Energy Provider then wait but for how long? 46 days

Writing about web page https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/helping-households-to-cut-their-energy-bills

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When I saw my SSE estimate for next year’s Gas & electric bills it prompted me to put the numbers into a switching site to see that I could save £300.
Reading the advice, I got my old data and plugged in the actual energy usage numbers and economy 7 percentages to increase the savings to £330 per year.

So I set up the switch to Scottish Power. How long would I have to wait?
One answers site says 28 to 40 days on average.
Scottish Power said “at least 28 days because of the cooling off period.
As I had initiated the transfer not been sold it I was notified that my cancellation period was only 7 days.

In fact the first email to say I was Scottish Power customer came 46 days after I logged onto their website to apply to switch.

This was to notify my old provider and arrange to send me bills.
They sent me 2 emails asking me to read each meter and then I logged into their switching site to record the readings so I did the work.

At the same time I switched to BT for fibre broadband.
My old ISP provided the switching code that would EXPIRE after 28 days. BT Openreach, for any of the ISPs, had to make changes. In my case; at the exchange, in 2 cabinets and get up a ladder to re-run my line from the drop cable to a new master socket. It took only 2 weeks start to finish! The engineer spent a full half day on the job though.

Scottish Power have set me up an online account so I could not initiate this myself. They still have not sent instructions about how to access this, change passwords etc., so to my mind the switch still has a way to go but the important billing point has officially switched.
The coalition raised aspirational goal to have a 1 day switching service. Dream on!.

Robert McGonigle : 08 Dec 2013 15:57 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem