Powergen's Telephone Service and How It Is Ruining My Life (Powergen)

Member Name: ben_neise

Product:	Powergen
Date:	17/10/03 (2230 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None, None, None

Disadvantages: Fraudulent, Misleading, Just Plain Evil

I am currently having some problems with over-eager debt collectors, and it?s Powergen?s fault.

Late 2001, I was living with a friend at a rented flat in Stirling. One evening, a salesman for Powergen came to the door. As is normal, we were told that by changing our electricity supplier we could save a substantial amount of money (we were on a Powercard meter). As we felt we were paying quite a lot for the electricity on the flat, we agreed, and the supplier was changed over to Powergen then and there. I was given a contract to sign, and signed it. Admittedly at this point I made an error of judgement by not reading the contract, but just giving it a cursory glance over. While I obviously regret this now, I feel that having a salesman sitting waiting on you to sign does not encourage an in-depth reading of a complicated contract. I also felt that because we were on an electricity meter, the worst thing that could happen was that we would pay slightly more for power than we had been.

To be honest, this was about the third time in about two months that we had changed electricity suppliers ? every time a salesman came to the door, either myself or my flatmate would change our provider! However, as the electricity was paid for by Powercards, it made no real difference to us who got the money at the end of the day ? we would continue buying Powercards from the newsagent across the street. (As an aside, not one of the suppliers actually seemed to save us any money.)

As the salesman was getting ready to go he asked us if we were with BT. We said that we were. The salesman then said that because BT?s electricity was provided by Powergen, BT offered Powergen customers a discount on their phone calls. All we had to do was to plug a box into the phone line. He gave us an adaptor, which plugged into the phone, and the wall socket, then left. At no point did the salesman ask us what kind of tariff we were paying with BT, or any other infor
mation. The box was pulled from his pocket, and came with no documentation whatsoever.

We received in the post a welcome pack from Powergen; this made no mention of the telephone box.

I had plugged the box into one junction box of one of the phones, and pretty much forgot about it. When the next BT bill came, it was not noticeably cheaper and said nothing about Powergen discounts, so I unplugged the box.

When I received a bill from Wescott Credit Services a couple of months ago asking for immediate payment of £115, I was surprised, as I had made sure that all the bills had been paid before I left the flat. My wife and I are now starting to look for a mortgage, and while my credit history has been less than exemplary in the past, I have been trying hard to improve my credit rating, by paying bills promptly.

When I phoned Wescott, they said that the bill was from non-payment of a Powergen bill. I immediately looked out my final bill from Npower (our gas supplier), which showed that the bill had been settled. As the electricity was metered, and the gas bill had been paid, I assumed that Powergen had made a mistake, probably due to our regularly changing utility companies.

When I phoned Powergen however I was told that the bill was for telephone services. I argued with the Powergen call-centre employee that at no point had I ever received telephone services from Powergen, I had always been a BT customer. It took a couple of minutes for the call-centre employee to mention the box that was plugged into the telephone, at which point it dawned on me what the bill was for. I immediately looked out my BT bills for the period, to find that we had been receiving bills from BT ? including call charges. With the call-centre employee, I worked out that there could be one of two scenarios:

A I had been charged twice for calls made.

B I had been charged by BT for those calls made from the phone which did not have
the box plugged in, and by Powergen for those calls which were made from the phone where the box was plugged in.

While I believe that scenario B is the more probable of the two, it was agreed that we should try to exclude scenario A as soon as possible. To this end I contacted BT and made arrangements with them to provide a bill for the period in question. Powergen also agreed to send a bill (which, in their favour, arrived promptly). BT however claimed they were having difficulty due to viruses disrupting their system, and then trying to get the bill from microfilm. Despite phoning BT weekly to check the bill?s progress, it has still not been sent. Powergen agreed to inform Wescott that I was dealing with the matter.

Despite also telling Wescott this myself, I continued to receive phone calls more than once a week from staff at Wescott, who presumably considered me to be trying to delay this matter. While no doubt it is Wescott?s duty as the ?attack dogs? of large corporations to chase up those in debt, I have made it quite clear to them that I was not attempting to flee, or delay the bill, but was involved in a dispute over the bill with Powergen. Despite telling Wescott again and again that I was waiting on information from BT, they continued to harass us with phone calls, and threats of legal action. Powergen seemed to fail to inform Wescott that I had got in touch with the organ grinder rather than the monkey.

The main disagreement however is that I do not believe that I owe Powergen any money whatsoever. As far as I am concerned, the method used by the salesman to get us to plug in the box is tantamount to fraud. Assuming that I have not paid for the phone calls already in our BT bill, I would have no hesitation in paying BT for these calls, I am however refusing to pay Powergen, who could be considered to be stealing from BT. The tariff I was on with BT at the time was an inclusive package, where the majority of call cha
rges were included in the cost of the package, effectively meaning, that when I plugged the Powergen box in, rather than saving money, I ended up paying for calls that BT would have provided for free. Also, with the salesman only providing one box, I had another phone in the house which was not covered by Powergen. At no point did the salesman say that I would receive a bill from them ? I was led to believe that I would simply be getting a discount on my regular BT bill. I received no letter of confirmation, or telephone call from Powergen saying that they were now providing my telephone services. The salesman did not at any point explain how the box worked.

This has been very distressing for me. I can?t help thinking that this has no doubt severely affected my credit rating over the past year. The way that both Powergen and Wescott have handled can only be described as petty ? I hardly think waiting another few weeks to resolve this is going to leave the CEO's children shoeless and hungry. Rather than allowing time for this to be sorted in a reasonable manner, they have resorted to scare tactics, despite my best efforts to keep them informed of what was going on.

This morning I received a letter informing me that I am being taken to court in 7 days unless I pay. I refuse to pay Powergen a penny.

I have tried to resolve this with Powergen, whose best effort so far is to offer £20 off the bill as a goodwill gesture! So far I have spent about 2-3 hours on the phone to Powergen speaking to some of the most incompetent, ignorant, badly trained and unhelpful staff I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with.

I'm not saying all their staff are like that, just the ones that I have spoken to

Avoid this company at all costs.

Summary: