npower..help required

andy.jazz

ok, latest bill has come in...and it has gone up to...£150 a month direct debit. This is for a year.

The last 6 months cost £1000 for gas and electric. (618...elec, 385...gas),


I am on "dual-fuel" and get a discount of £95....

I was previously paying £107 which was reduced from £120..

The problem is there is only me in the house!

I have an immersion heater that must be at the most £1 a day (electricity)

I have no central heating and 1 gas fire and a gas oven..upstairs I use electric 2 to 3kw for a few hours tops ..

what is going on? I had a new meter installed in '06 after it transpired that I was on the wrong tariff (economy 7..for 10 years).

I can afford the bill but I don't know what is going on to warrant the amount I am paying......is the new meter faulty?

major help needed..thx...:mad:

Magentasue

Electric heating is expensive and it's been very cold. May be as simple as that. How many kwh have you used in the last quarter? How many in a summer quarter?

andy.jazz

Magentasue wrote: »

Electric heating is expensive and it's been very cold. May be as simple as that. How many kwh have you used in the last quarter? How many in a summer quarter?

you know...I did use the electric fires for the kitchen a lot this winter...

I think its actually going to be cheaper (in the long run) to get in central heating...

I will call Npower tomorrow to check the numbers and units.

jdvhsully

I have also had an issue with npower changing my DD from £61 to £253. Reading some of the comments on other threads I wonder if its part of the changing to twice yearly billing and they want the money in the bank!

Just a thought

david39

I think that the power companies are increasing monthly DDs to outrageous amounts, knowing that some people will continue to pay without querying them.
The reason they are doing this is to temporarily increase their revenue from domestic customers in order to compensate for their reduced revenue from commercial premises that are either closing or reducing their consumption because of reduced production or short time working.
By the time they have to cut the domestic users' DDs they hope that their industrial customers will be back in full production again.
Scottish Power increased my DDs from £77 pm to £117 so I changed suppliers. When SP found out they rang me back, asked why I was changing and offered me a new deal at £85pm. They could not answer the question "If £85 is correct now, why did you try to get me to pay £117?"

Cardew

david39 wrote: »

I think that the power companies are increasing monthly DDs to outrageous amounts, knowing that some people will continue to pay without querying them.
The reason they are doing this is to temporarily increase their revenue from domestic customers in order to compensate for their reduced revenue from commercial premises that are either closing or reducing their consumption because of reduced production or short time working.
By the time they have to cut the domestic users' DDs they hope that their industrial customers will be back in full production again.
Scottish Power increased my DDs from £77 pm to £117 so I changed suppliers. When SP found out they rang me back, asked why I was changing and offered me a new deal at £85pm. They could not answer the question "If £85 is correct now, why did you try to get me to pay £117?"

I think you will find that would breach the terms of their licence with ofgem; there are strict conditions about making a profit from DD payments.

That said there is clear evidence that all the companies are 'tightening up' on DD payments so that large debit balances are not being built up.

Ironically until recently the major complaint on this forum was that companies had set DDs too low and allowed huge debit balances to accrue.

andy.jazz

Cardew wrote: »

I think you will find that would breach the terms of their licence with ofgem; there are strict conditions about making a profit from DD payments.

That said there is clear evidence that all the companies are 'tightening up' on DD payments so that large debit balances are not being built up.

Ironically until recently the major complaint on this forum was that companies had set DDs too low and allowed huge debit balances to accrue.

Yes they dropped my original payment from 120 to 107 without asking me..and now its 148..??

I have been with them for 10 years..can they not average things out? At one time I was paying 60 or so...

1carminestocky

Are you on npower's dual fuel standard tariff or their dual fuel online tariff?

andy.jazz

1carminestocky wrote: »

Are you on npower's dual fuel standard tariff or their dual fuel online tariff?

dual fuel standard tariff...is online better?

1carminestocky

andy.jazz wrote: »

dual fuel standard tariff...is online better?

Check their leccy tariffs - their standard leccy charges are normally absolutely horrendously over-priced. What region are you in? I will check it out for you if you wish. Certainly in my region (Yorkshire) they are stupidly high on the standard tariff:

14.910p for the first 182 kWh per quarter, and 13.902p thereafter

That is 18% higher (on average use of 3300kwhs) than the cheapest tariff (Scottish Power)

Rip-off City in other words.