Npower. Do I have a leg to stand on???

woodspur14

Hi all. If you could offer a bit of advice it would be much appreciated. Back in May of this year I switched both my gas and electricity over to Npower from British Gas. Whilst I wasn’t expecting it to be hassle free I can now report it has taken Npower 7 month to set up my electrical account!!!

I won’t bore you with the ongoing issues but basically the gas account was set up after about 2-3 months but the electricity is still ongoing. I have spoken to senior management who promised this would be sorted by the end of October (it wasn’t), so have now written a formal letter of complaint.

In the mean time however they haven’t even set up a direct debit agreement, so to date I haven’t paid for any electricity for these 7 months.

When challenged on the poor service all Npower offer to do is spread my money owing over the next 12 months. Correct me if I’m being stupid but if any other retail shop, service provider, etc behaved in this way consumers would be going crazy and demanding a refund. It seems as a power provider Npower seem to be untouchable.

I have been making provision to pay this bill but when you haven’t even been advised of the potential cost I’ve no idea if I’m going to be caught out.

Anyone had a similar experience???? What are my chances of Npower stumping up some of the cost????

Also, why is it that we have to take meters readings for the power providers??? Last time I checked they employed people to do this for them yet we seem to end up either getting estimated bills or taking the reading ourselves then using our phone bill to tell them the reading!!!!

1carminestocky

Send copies of all your correspondence to Consumer Focus, then, and THIS is the important bit, inform npower of this fact and tell them you expect Consumer Focus to be very interested in how npower are going to get this sorry mess sorted, plus I'm sure Consumer Focus would be very pleased to see you in some way compensated for the incovenience caused by their incompentence...

littletommytucker

The best thing for you to do would be to keep quiet about your ploblem and start a little savings account for when the bill does come in. Under the new OfGem guidelines, anything over a year old will be written off... so keep your fingers crossed that the problem carries on for another 5 months... and then your starting to get free electricity

Untill it reaches the 12 month point... they can, and will make you pay for anything you have used

Anything after 12 months.. they cannot bill you for! Yay!!

tightwadten

littletommytucker wrote: »

The best thing for you to do would be to keep quiet about your ploblem and start a little savings account for when the bill does come in. Under the new OfGem guidelines, anything over a year old will be written off... so keep your fingers crossed that the problem carries on for another 5 months... and then your starting to get free electricity

Untill it reaches the 12 month point... they can, and will make you pay for anything you have used

Anything after 12 months.. they cannot bill you for! Yay!!

Is the 12 month back dating rule a legal obligation or just a voluntary code of conduct?

spiro

tightwadten wrote: »

Is the 12 month back dating rule a legal obligation or just a voluntary code of conduct?

This was imposed by OFGEM, it was originally 24 months and then reduced to 12 months. All suppliers have to abide by this. Also there should be no reason they can set up a DD based on the industry average consumption for your meter point (MPAN) and start taking payment so that you dont get a big shock. It may be asking them the excuse for not setting up the account and post that here as we may me able to shed more light on things for you.

tightwadten

spiro wrote: »

This was imposed by OFGEM, it was originally 24 months and then reduced to 12 months. All suppliers have to abide by this. Also there should be no reason they can set up a DD based on the industry average consumption for your meter point (MPAN) and start taking payment so that you dont get a big shock. It may be asking them the excuse for not setting up the account and post that here as we may me able to shed more light on things for you.

Thanks for the reply, my problems with N Power, my last correct bill from them was in June 07, my next bill was in March 08, this bill had the readings for my economy 7 and normal tarif the wrong way around, i informed them of this and they replied it would be corrected on my next bill.The next bill i recievid was in July 08 and had the same problem, again i let them know and recieved the same reply but once again my September bill still had the same problem, by this stage i was contacting them on a weekly basis to get them to sort it out and when they sent me a revised bill i owe them £843. I feel agrieved about this as i pay by direct debit and if they had billed me on time and correctly i could have paid any shortfall at a far earlier date and avoided this large debt.
The revised bill they've sent is 3 pages long and when i asked them to explain it it still didn't make much sense and they've offered me £20 compensation