Some customers are happy, but Scottish Power only acted when The Independent got in touch

After Simon Read passed on reader Alison Richards' problem, the company responded almost the same day

Clear the air: Longannet station in Scotland, where the power giant must do better with complaints (Getty Images)

Your complaints about Scottish Power continue to pour in. That's no real surprise to me, but among the emails I did get a surprise. I received the following from Andy Morley. He wrote: “There are always two sides to a story. Unfortunately you only appear to report one.”

He continued: “I am happy with Scottish Power, and although they were very slightly more expensive in a recent comparison analysis, I stayed with them due to trouble-free service and the fact they allow me to decide what my direct payment should be, and I can do that instantly online.”

That's a fair point, which I should acknowledge. While there have been tens of thousands of fed-up Scottish Power customers, millions more have presumably been satisfied with the service they've received from the energy giant, and the prices. Indeed my dealings with the company have been largely positive in that it has responded quickly to complaints and queries and sorted out the problems that I've passed on to it.

But that, I guess, is my biggest problem with Scottish Power. It shouldn't take a call from me for the utility to leap into action and give one of its customer's complaints the proper care it deserves. Take, for example, the case of reader Alison Richards. After I passed on her problem, the company responded almost the same day.

“My complaint handler was very apologetic and agreed that I should not have had to go to a newspaper to get it sorted – though what else I could have done, I'm not sure,” Alison told me. “I'm still annoyed that customer service staff did nothing between my first email in June and my sending it to you, except keep repeating the same assurances that they were working on it. They also seemed unable to implement the stated complaints process.

”Until Scottish Power has staff who are able to resolve complaints, rather than repeat platitudes, they will still feature at the bottom of service league tables.“

That's about the size of it. Most of us are prepared to forgive an error by a big company if it sorts it out quickly.

Scottish Power has my sympathy for the original computer disaster that hit its customers, but until the company has resolved every single problem, it will rightly continue to attract my opprobrium.