An Edinburgh family were left 'flabbergasted' after their energy bills spiked from £199 a month in January to £756 per month. This left their bank account in the red, forcing the family to cancel their upcoming holiday.
Abu Meron was left in shock after Scottish Power repeatedly raised the prices of their energy bills, and then took nearly £2000 out of their bank account. The dad had to cancel the family holiday to Paris which would have been the first getaway in years for Abu and his front line NHS worker wife.
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The dad-of-two began to investigate and contacted the bank to cancel his direct debits. He then complained to Scottish Power, where he claims he was told to 'deal with it.'
He discovered that £1,600 taken out in June and July was actually a blunder from the company, who admit fault and have apologised, but only refunded the customer and sorted the situation after being contacted by Edinburgh Live.
The money is now in the process of being refunded and Scottish Power have apologised for the inconvenience caused and admitted they should have picked up on the huge change in amount coming out of the customers bank account.
Speaking to 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 have noticed that Scottish Power took over my account and as I noticed that they are also 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 explained: "They have taken away all this amount from my account I have noticed my bank statement when I have seen my account balance does not seem okay as we were planning for holiday I wanted to pay for my hotel from this account and find out I do not have enough money left to pay for the hotel from my account.
"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 have installed smart meter 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 done 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 £165.00 per month but Scottish Power is not handing over my supply to Utility Warehouse.
"As I do not understand how we really get charged by the energy company we poor people assume a bill is correct and we have a budget for this until it is bearable, we bear it to our highest end.
"We really work hard for our living when we see £108 per month bill goes up to £756 that is when we feel that it not only ripping us off it is modern robbery.
"We start thinking what government is really doing for the people specially when Scotland is an energy producing country? What is the minimum and maximum cost for every household? And so many more nightmares in this living crisis."
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A Scottish Power Spokesperson told Edinburgh Live: "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."
Adding: "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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