ScottishPower to pay £8.5million to benefit consumers following our investigation

Press release

Publication date

Industry sector

Supply and Retail Market

ScottishPower has agreed to pay £8.5 million to consumers following our investigation into how it carried out its sales approaches.

We found that ScottishPower did not have in place appropriate management arrangements to adequately train and monitor their doorstep and telesales agents. This resulted in misleading information being provided to customers.

ScottishPower has accepted these failings, which have now all been rectified. The company stopped doorstep sales in 2011 and has put in place independent checks on the conduct of their telephone agents in all new sales. Had this not been the case the company would have faced a higher penalty.

The size of the payment reflects the impact of the sales practices on consumers and it also recognises ScottishPower’s cooperative engagement with Ofgem to put right their processes.  Our investigation found no evidence of a strategy by ScottishPower to deliberately mis-sell to customers.

Details of the package

ScottishPower has set-up a £1 million customer compensation fund. Customers that believe they may have been mis-sold to can either complete an online form or call the dedicated phone number. Customers can call Scottish Power on 0800 0740 362      

www.scottishpower.co.uk/salescompensation

ScottishPower will deliver the remaining £7.5 million through payments to customers identified under the Warm Home Discount Scheme. Payments will be made to recipients of the 2012/13 core and broader group. It is estimated that over 140,000 customers will receive a payment of around £50. ScottishPower will send an explanatory letter to all affected customers and the payments will be made automatically by ScottishPower by December 2013.

Ongoing investigations into energy sales

We have concluded three mis-selling investigations since May 2012.

Our two ongoing mis-selling investigations are into npower, which was launched in 2010, and into E.ON, which was launched last year. 

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