A family from Edinburgh have been left 'flabbergasted' after they were forced to cancel their first holiday in years after their energy bills rose from £199 a month in January to a whopping £756 per month.
Abu Meron's bank account was left in the red after Scottish Power repeatedly raised the prices of his family's energy bills, and then took nearly £2000 out of their bank account by mistake.
This meant that the dad-of-two had to cancel his family's trip to Paris which would have been the first vacation in years for Abu and his wife, who is a front line NHS worker, according to Edinburgh Live.
After he became suspicious of the sudden price hike, Abu contacted his bank to cancel his direct debits. He then lodged a complaint to Scottish Power - but claims he was simply told to 'deal with it.'
The man then discovered that the £1,600 which was taken out in June and July was actually a blunder. The company have admitted fault and apologised, but only issued a refund in a bid after being contacted by Edinburgh Live.
Abu said: "I live with my wife and two children in a four-bedroom detached house but we only use three of the bedrooms.
"My wife works full time for NHS Lothian, I am full time self employed, my son is studying at Herriot Watt University and my daughter is at Holyrood RC high school.
"My electricity and gas supplier were Tonik Energy. I always paid my bills through direct debit and they used to charge me £108.61 per month for gas and electricity.
"On November 2020 I noticed that Scottish Power took over my account and were charging £108.61 per month so I had no concern about it.
"They have continued charging me the same amount until September 27 last year and from October 27 to December 29 Scottish Power charged me £159.00 per month."
He continued: "Then from January 27 till March 28 this year they charged me £199.00 per month, from 27th April 2022 they started charging me £321.00 and this continued till May 2022.
"All payments made through Direct debit and on June 27 this year they took £756.00 from my account. They have not asked me about all this as it was direct debit."
There was reportedly no correspondence or information from the company to let the customers know such a large amount would be taken from their account.
Abu said: "I thought somewhere without my knowledge some money is missing and I started looking all the transactions. I find out It was Scottish Power.
"I made a call to customer service and asked about this to find out about the sudden increase in direct debit without my prior knowledge."
When contacting customer services, his anxiety at the situation worsened due to the brisk and unsympathetic tone from the customer service advisor.
He said: "I found the customer service adviser very unprofessional. She said, 'this is your bill. You have to pay.' I was flabbergasted by the indecisive conclusion and decided on cancelling my direct debit and changing supplier.
"In between this time, I got a smart meter installed through Scottish power which is giving way less charging fees than the direct debit they are taking out.
"Then I cancelled the direct debit on July. For some reason, it was not cancelled, and then Scottish Power took another payment of £756.00 in July.
"I went to the bank and made my formal complain about it and cancelled my direct debit. I have contacted Utility Ware House to supply me the Gas & Electricity and they offered me £165 per month but Scottish Power is not handing over my supply to Utility Warehouse.
"We poor people assume a bill is correct and budget for it as much as we can. We really work hard for our living so when we see a £108 per month bill goes up to £756y, that is when we feel that it not only ripping us off, but it is modern robbery.
"We start thinking, what is the government really doing for people, especially when Scotland is an energy producing country? What is the minimum and maximum cost for every household? This cost of living crisis is a nightmare."
A Scottish Power Spokesperson told said: "We’re sorry for the inconvenience caused to Mr Meron. This appears to be due to a mistake in the meter reading provided in April of this year, which meant it looked like much more energy had been used than had been the case.
"We should have picked up on this when we installed new smart meters in July, but didn’t, and this was our error. The account has now been rebilled to reflect actual energy use and we’re working to finalise the account balance in conjunction with Mr Mehran and his bank, as he has requested a refund of direct debits from them.
"We’ve advised Mr Mehran of this and will keep in touch until everything is fully resolved."
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