Mother left furious after family is left without electricity for 72 hours
A mother of three has labelled an energy company an “absolute disgrace” after she and her family went 72 hours without electricity.
Jackie Sheppard, from Oswestry, was left without power for three days last week with her children, despite them being on the list of vulnerable families.
Jackie claims that there was a mix-up between EDF energy and Scottish Power and believes that both companies think they are responsible for her account.
She has reached out to the companies and would like someone to take responsibility for the “stressful ordeal”.
Jackie had been a customer with EDF up until May 17 when she was switched to a prepayment meter by Scottish Power.
On Friday Jackie came home from work to find that she had no electricity and had to travel 30 minutes to her parents’ house to try to fix the issue.
She claimed: “I managed to get on the internet and could see my pre-payment account had been closed, so there was no physical way of topping it up.
“I spent hours on the chats and trying to get through to the call centre to no avail.
“I had just done a full week’s food shopping of £160 worth of goods – I had a fridge and a freezer thawing out.
“I have three children and I had nowhere to go and no electricity,” she said. “I couldn’t afford to stay in hotels et cetera.
“I spent the majority of Saturday sitting in my car charging my phone with three children in the car on hold for several hours. At around 11.45am I spoke to someone who had apparently set an account up for me and guaranteed it would be back on in three hours.”
But by 6pm that day Jackie claims she still had no electricity in her home and was forced to pack up her belongings and move to her parents’ once again.
She said: “How is this even allowed? How is electricity allowed to be disconnected from somebody on the risk list?
"The trauma and mental damage this has caused is an absolute disgrace.”
EDF energy said the issues were the result of actions taken by Scottish Power.
A spokesperson for Scottish Power said: “We are sorry for the difficulties Jackie has experienced with her energy supply and have taken action to restore power to her home.
"The issue stemmed from an error in meter and address data, due to amendments made by SSE to the sector’s national database in 2019. We are currently investigating the issue and we will be working with the property’s current supplier to resolve it.”
