Advice Please: Upside Down Meter Reading

donnacha_2

Today, I was horrified to discover that Npower has mixed up my Day and Night meter readings, roughly doubling my bills over the past 7 years, costing me between £1500 and £2000!

My last bill has

Night: 19079

Standard: 32547


... whereas my meter currently has

Low: 33221

Normal: 19587

... and I have confirmed that my meter correctly switches between Low and Normal between the day and night, so, the amounts on the meter are correct, I've just been continuously billed the wrong way round.

The corrected version shows that less than a third of my usage should be at daytime rates, which are roughly three times higher, as opposed to more than two-thirds of my usage being at daytime rates. This appears to have almost doubled my costs.

I suspect the original mistake was made soon after I had the previous prepay meter replaced upon moving in, back in January 2001. A phone conversation with an Npower rep suggests that all the official meter readings I've had over the years have made the same mistake and, even if the correct numbers were submitted, the system might have "corrected" those entries, presuming that a mistake had been made.

My most recent official Npower reading was back in February of this year but most of my bills have been estimates or based upon self-readings I've submitted by phone. I guess there is a chance that I may have got the figures mixed up myself but it doesn't seem likely, I would have been pretty careful about that, I think the system may have been "correcting" my submissions too.

I have always felt that my bills were ridiculously high for a single person living in a small flat but presumed that it must be due to my having a computer on almost all the time, and often the telly too. I also presumed that my ancient fridge-freezer, now thankfully replaced, was sucking up a lot of power. I presumed, too, that my infrequent attempts to heat my freezing flat, in a council block with no gas, was costing a lot of money.

I am sure that Npower will fight tooth and nail to prevent me getting any of my overpayment back and I have no idea what my legal position is. I don't have my old bills although Npower do have archive copies - am I going to have to take them to court in order to discover what was billed and when?

I would greatly appreciate any advice and suggestions about how I should proceed.

Also, has anyone ever heard of this happening to anyone else?

WhistleBlower

They will rebill and apply the difference as a credit. It may take up to two months to do. (The current backlog is 4-6 weeks)

You may ahve to fight somewhat to get that credit back i'm afriad but perseverence will put paid to that, request a manager if you have to.

Cardew

When you had your pre-pay meter removed, was the new meter set to zero for both?

Much as NPower are a 'difficult' company to deal with, I wouldn't be so pessimistic. If you have been wrongly charged there is normally no problem in getting a refund.

I suspect you are correct about the computer auto-correcting your readings, it naturally would 'think' it impossible for your reading to have dropped 10,000 on one meter and jump the same on the other meter.

The difficulty may well be that NPower installed a new computer system last year and they genuinely may not have any previous records of your account; although I note that you say that NPower have archive copies; have they stated that?

What they might do is use the consumption records for the last 12 months and use that as a basis to extrapolate back to 2001.

In the end I suspect they will offer you a compensation figure on which you can negotiate; your weak ground is that you have a responsibility to check your bills - which you clearly haven't done.

Your situation happens quite a lot apparently, but often to the customers advantage!!!

I would simply wait for NPower to produce the old bills or make you an offer. If you can't reach an agreed figure there are further steps possible to take the dispute further.

However at the moment there is no dispute; just a problem that needs resolving.

donnacha_2

Thank you very much for the advice so far.

WhistleBlower wrote: »

They will rebill and apply the difference as a credit. It may take up to two months to do. (The current backlog is 4-6 weeks)

Oh dear, credit would be a problem as I applied, about a fortnight ago, to switch providers!

Switching was something I had put off for ages because I never seemed to have time to research the options. Then, when I did, it turned out the the best option for my area was Npower's online tariff but, guess what: you can't transfer directly to that, you have to switch to another provider for a few months first

Now, by the time that Npower get around to addressing my problem, I will probably be with British Gas!

I can, however, jump back to Npower after a couple of month, not sure exactly how many, do you think they would credit it against my new account?

Cardew wrote: »

When you had your pre-pay meter removed, was the new meter set to zero for both?

I think it must have been, I think they installed a completely new meter.

Cardew wrote: »

Much as NPower are a 'difficult' company to deal with, I wouldn't be so pessimistic. If you have been wrongly charged there is normally no problem in getting a refund.

I certainly hope so but I worry that a lot companies these days stretch things out in the knowledge that most people give up if you make it difficult enough; Virgin are a nightmare in that respect.

Cardew wrote: »

I suspect you are correct about the computer auto-correcting your readings, it naturally would 'think' it impossible for your reading to have dropped 10,000 on one meter and jump the same on the other meter.

Yes, she mentioned that if the lower number was allowed to go in it would result in an absolutely massive bill because the system would presume that you had used up the entire clock and started again at zero. So, effectively, if they take your first meter reading the wrong way round, it will stay wrong even if subsequent readings are correctly entered.

Again, I'm wondering how many other people out there have no idea that they are paying too much because of this problem? And isn't it worrying that this sort of mistake is so heavily in the companies' interests.

Cardew wrote: »

The difficulty may well be that NPower installed a new computer system last year and they genuinely may not have any previous records of your account; although I note that you say that NPower have archive copies; have they stated that?

Well, they haven't stated anything officially but the woman I spoke to seemed to think that all bills are archived, it just takes several weeks for one of their people to go and consult the archive. She told me that it was a very complicated situation and that simply uncovering when and how the problem had arisen would take until at least December.

Cardew wrote: »

What they might do is use the consumption records for the last 12 months and use that as a basis to extrapolate back to 2001.

God, I hope not because my consumption pattern has changed considerably in recent years - I hardly ever use heating now and have a more efficient fridge freezer. My position is that should charge me for exactly what I used, at prices of the time when I used it and refund me the overpayments they have been holding for all this time - I gave them money, they should give me money back. What kills me is that I was incredibly broke for most of that time, and hardly ever switched on the heating because I thought I couldn't afford it!

Cardew wrote: »

In the end I suspect they will offer you a compensation figure on which you can negotiate; your weak ground is that you have a responsibility to check your bills - which you clearly haven't done.

Although it is true that, until today, I did not notice that the numbers were the wrong way round, I don't think most people could reasonably be expected to notice, especially if they had been submitting the correct figures and also had official readings submitted - it's not the type of mistake anyone would be watching out for, is it?

I mean, although I understand why they have a correcting algorithm, I surely couldn't have been expected to know about it and watch out for this mix-up.

What should be expected is that, given that they have millions of customers and this probably is certain to have occurred before, they should have a second algorithm that alerts them when apparently wrong figures are entered again and again. It would take one line of code - is it very cynical of me to suggest that it hasn't been done because this is a mistake that makes them money?

As it happens, I have paid reasonably close attention to my bills, I even brought up the ridiculous amounts with Npower several times over the years, I just hadn't spotted the exact reason. I tried to get them to check the meter and the supply into my house (in case there was some sort of syphoning going on) but all they ever did was suggest that I buy a device to test each of my appliances to see if one of them was using too much power.

Cardew wrote: »

Your situation happens quite a lot apparently, but often to the customers advantage!!!

Yeah, I suspected that it probably did happen quite a bit, seems to be a pretty easy mistake to make in the first place, especially as different meters list the Day and Night rates in different orders, but the woman I spoke to claimed she had never heard of it happening before

Cardew wrote: »

I would simply wait for NPower to produce the old bills or make you an offer. If you can't reach an agreed figure there are further steps possible to take the dispute further.

However at the moment there is no dispute; just a problem that needs resolving.

Yeah, thanks, that sounds about right, I've got to sit tight, wait and trust that fairness will prevail.

My main niggling worry is that, somehow, it will turn out that I owe them a huge amount of money. That happened in my first year because I didn't realise my bills were estimated and wrong - my meter was being read regularly by Scottish Power but, for some reason, they weren't passing the info on to Npower. So, when they finally took their own reading, and I now suspect that is when they first got it the wrong way round, I got one Hell of a bill.

In this case, however, I'm pretty sure there's now way it can turn out that I've paid too little - overall night usage, which is cheaper, clearly outstrips overall day usage.

Thanks again and I would very much welcome any further advice anyone might have.

WhistleBlower

All our old bills are kept either electronicaly or for our oldest, on microfiche. Can take some time to pull the records though if it's microfiche.

With regards to switching, if your old account is in credit when you go back to NPower there shouldn't be a problem getting it transferred to the new one. Otherwise they'll be sending you a cheque.

Transposed reads are more common and more of a hassle than NPower probably want sot admit too...but i'm gonna guess it's the same for other companies because i've seen a lot of accounts which have come to us already with 2, 3 or even 4 rate meters (aka supertarifs) where the reads are in the wrong places. Problem then is not only do we have to fix our own systems but we have to get the old suppliers one sorted too otherwise nothing follows on right.

Actually dealt with one of these today, customer was in a significant ammount of debt and we'd mis-billed thanks to three transposed registers.

Sad thing is that we'd mis-billed so that her debt was lower than it should be. I got my ear bitten off for that one. Got her sorted in the end though, worked out a long-term repayment plan rather than our usual so she was relatively happy.

I have to confess tha tthat sort of thing really does make me feel bad because it's preventable.

donnacha_2

WhistleBlower, it has no doubt been said before but it's really good to have you here, giving a human face to the people we deal with on the phone, often in the most frustrating circumstances. Even though you are clearly not here as a shill for your company, you do them credit by your honesty and willingness to take the time to give us an insight into the other side of the equation. A sincere thanks for that.

Good to have the technical term for what happened, transposed read, just knowing that will help me to cut through some of the BS.

WhistleBlower

Considering i work Debt Collection, yeah, it's usually prety bad circumstances, heh.

However, i gotta say, 99% of the debt collection lot are excellent, (barring telecollections, they're mostly new so it's still a little shaky, they;ll improve)

It does bug me sometimes that people can forget that the voice on the other end of the phone isn't NPower, it's some poor sap on just above minimum wage who has to go home tonight to a family. (Or if you're like me, their pets, heh) But then it'd do one or two employees good to rememebr that baout customers too. *rolls eyes*

spiro

If you check you meter you should find a card attached that has the date the meter was exchanged plus the final readings for the old meter and the initial readings for the new meter. What the supplier can do via the Meter Operator is effectively back out the exchange and start again. They can then ask the Data Collector (meter reader) to reprocess the readings the correct way round. I have a 1-rate meter but the serial number was wrong on the bill and I suffered from a 'coffee shop read' which cased all subsequent readings to fail. To resolve this they sent a meter worker around who did exactly what I have described. Took about 2 months to reprocess everything but it was sorted.

spiro

Did you manage to get this sorted successfully?

Rory166

are you able to put on this thread how the problem was resolved.

I only ask because I am a meter fitter contracted to npower and may be asked by customers in a similar situation.

Obviously you have night storage heating?

Rory

donnacha_2

No, far from resolved and, in the meantime, there have been some unbelievable developments, I'll update this thread as soon as I have a chance.