Yesterday I was transferred to another energy supplier - from Scottish Power to Shell Energy. Supposedly, possibly, this was because another person either 1. gave my address (?) or 2. incorrectly gave MY "MPAN" number to Shell Energy. The first I learn about it was a text message saying "Sorry to see you leave". I thought it phishing at first. Then I got an email too. So my account is indeed cancelled, because it's switching? Only I never asked for it.
I am shocked someone can basically cancel my account with the energy provider, and start a new one seemingly simply by the MPAN number that they likely typed in slightly incorrectly (a number here or there) ?!?! Wtf? Am I missing something?
Supposedly this is called an "Erroneous transfer". And there's a whole team managing it? So this must happen all the time. Thought I'd mention it in case anyone ever gets to experience this time waste. Called Scottish power, who were absolutely useless and said "call Shell please". Which I did because I'm soft. Now I'm onto Scottish power again, I have zero belief that this will end well 😀
If you end up back on Scottish power then no it won't end well.
My first job with a large power supplier was to do follow up calls a couple of days after the sales team had got someone to switch, precisely to stop this sort of problem. Basically just checking the customer had agreed to transfer to us.
After that got outsourced to India, they got me sorting out the disputed readings when transfers went wrong. Often because my previous job hadn't been done, you'd not believe the number of people who had the wrong ****ing meter on their account!
Wonder if the new person will be paying your bill as well?
I'd be checking whether the new tariff they got for you is any cheaper first!
Yup, that's a thing. Expect to enjoy it a few more times if you've got an MPAN mix-up with someone else.
Just contact Shell and they will reverse it off. Every time I switch they transfer Flat 4 My Road and not No 4 My Road. This is despite me explaining very clearly to watch out for it and giving them the MPRN etc.
Each time they have to reverse of Flat 4's move and start again...
Mrmonkfinger; that's quite shocking that there is no "metadata" around the mpan? Or security? An mpan should you know, never change address. Bizarre system.
Danny: yeah I think shell initiated one, but they didn't tell me this or the process etc. Scottish power said "we will wait 24 hours because if we raise one and they have too, they'll cancel eachother out"
Shambles.
Happened to me. First I knew about it was when I got a £30K gas bill for a commercial warehouse. Somebody gave the wrong meter number. Took months to sort out and zero compensation. I was being threatened with legal proceedings for refusing to pay. Ridiculous system.
Dknwhy holy batman. Yeah seems to be a trust based system with no verification.
One of the smaller providers who was going under was swapping all their high usage customers to other providers without asking them, 100s of them a day. Ofgem told them to stop it and move them all back!
@swedishmatt no not really, it's a bit of a shambles as far as I can tell.
I'd suggest opening an official complaint. That puts your provider on the clock to fix your issue. Then get them, as part of the complaint, to deal with correcting your entry on the national database of mpan / address.
Having been through the same mill a couple of years ago, I can say it is a massive ball ache but if you don't sort it you'll just get the same crap over and over.
In my case shell energy were the bar stewards who rocked up out of the blue with a demand for 1500 quid or bailiffs to follow in a weeks time. I'd never heard of them before the demand letter. Scottish Power were mostly quite helpful, contrary to popular experience.
Although they also managed to later mess things up in a new and interesting way, but that was at least solved without them threatening the bailiffs at any point.
At this stage in time I don't have a particularly positive impression of the utility companies.
I can totally believe dknwhy's experience.
Used to work for a metering services company who had a team of people working on the data quality issues. Massive issue so not at all surprising.
Yes erroneous transfers are a not uncommon issue in the industry. It will probably take a couple of months to fix but once it has been sorted it should essentially be like you never left Scottish Power.
Another reason why competition and privatisation in the energy industry is an incredible waste of time and money. This is coming from someone who works in said industry for a private company. Absolutely pointless!