NPower scam

Hi all, sorry this is a bit long.

Thought I'd let people know, last night (Saturday) I was getting ready to go out and BF was waiting for a friend to come round. The intercom phone buzzer thing went about 6pm so I went to answer it thinking it was BF's friend very early.

However, when I picked up the phone I got someone saying that they were from NPower and had come to make sure that we were set up and receiving our discount correctly! I said that we weren't with NPower (because we're not) and he said that he knew that, but he'd come to make sure that everything was set up correctly and we were receiving our £200 discount! So I proceeded to tell him that we were not with NPower and did not want to be with NPower and that was the end of it.

After this exchange I got a little worried because our neighbour has told us that all the ground-floor flats have been burgled at one point, so part of me was wondering if this person was pressing all the buzzers to see if anyone was in and then if they answered claimed to be from NPower. I said this to my BF so he went into the main hall to see if this person was still there.

The chap was still there and showed my BF his NPower ID card and told my BF that he had a list of everyone in the block who was on a dual-fuel tariff with one of the competing large gas and electric providers and he was here to try and get people to switch.

If he had said at the beginning that if we switched he could offer us a discount, then that would have been fine, I would have told him that we weren't interested straight away, however it was the devious, dishonest and underhanded tactics that he used to try and gain entry to our flat. If we had been very elderly or vulnerable we could have easily been conned into letting this person into our flat and signing anything that he put in front of us. We also live in a private area with signs everywhere saying 'no hawking' and 'no trespassing'.

I was so enraged by this point that I actually got NPower's customer services number, got straight through to someone and stated that I wanted to make a complaint. The chap I was speaking to asked me for my customer number and I told him that was the problem, we didn't have one as we weren't with them but I wished to complain about one of their sales team. He asked what had happened so I told him, he then passed me to a member of their sales complaints team so I spoke to someone else, she said that it sounded very unusual and gave me a complaint reference number and told me it would be passed higher and someone would contact me to discuss it. They also asked if we got a name and I told them the first name that BF remembered seeing on his ID card but thinking about it afterwards I wish I'd got his full name.

Interestingly, when I spoke to the first chap at NPower he told me that I had called just in time as they were closing the call-centre in the next few minutes, part of me is wondering whether this guy who came round came so late that no-one would have been able to ring to complain and would have let it go by the next day...

I just wanted to warn other people that NPower are using dishonest methods to try and gain entry to peoples' houses. I don't know if this has happened to anyone else, but it would be interesting to know.

Thanks for reading,

Caroline