ScottishPower kept sending cheques and account letters in a dead man’s name after his brother had already told the company he had died. The latest round left BR of Fife with a debt collection letter for £130, even though the utility also owed a £430 credit on the man’s electricity account.
BR, who was his late brother’s sole executor, said the first cheque for the £430 credit arrived made out to his brother and could not be cashed. After multiple emails, ScottishPower reissued the cheque in the same name. He was then told a third cheque would take four weeks to process manually. Since then, he says, four more cheques have turned up, all still addressed to his brother.
The sequence matters because it is not a one-off slip. BR says he informed ScottishPower of his brother’s death, yet the company still sent a debt collection notice, then a refund cheque that could not be used, then another, then four more after that. ScottishPower has now told him the electricity account will be closed because there is no credit left on it, but it has stopped replying to his emails, leaving the family with no clear answer on how a deceased customer’s account can keep producing paperwork in his name.
The case lands in the middle of a wider complaint about bereavement handling at the utility. In March, a columnist reported on a newly bereaved widow who was bombarded with letters, emails and calls to her late husband over nine months. Another customer, LW of London, said ScottishPower emailed her late husband about an unpaid direct debit weeks after she had told the company he had died, with the error dating back to 2018. ScottishPower says bereavement is incredibly distressing and that it strives to provide care and understanding to those affected, but it also says that in a very small number of cases that standard has not been met and each one is reviewed to see what could have been done better.
For BR, the unanswered question is not whether the account will be closed. It is why ScottishPower kept issuing cheques in his brother’s name after being told, more than once, that the man was dead. Until that is explained, the company’s promise of care in bereavement cases will look a long way from the letters it keeps posting.
