N Power....what a rip off

aelitaman

Hubbali, The sulpting rate that npower charge is the lowest during the summer the %tage units they charge in Oct is still below a 12 month average if used. So the ideal time to switch from npower gas is 30th october.

Also watch out for another trick. I bet they send you a bill a few days before your 12month join date. The reason is they do not them have to give you the discounts on that bill but the next. They did this to me so check with them and try and get a bill later than your join date and insist the discounts are on it.

Good luck

WhistleBlower

I work for NPower and their sculpting makes !!!!!! all sense to me either.

What happened, we checked the last Atlantic reading and it was higher than the estimated "start" reading of N Power.

Not uncommon i'm afraid. Some accounts end up with estimated connection reads, some don't it depend on about 90 different things.

Always check your first bill from a new supplier and your final from your old one. Compare the reads, if they don't match call the new supplier and ask them to re-agree the read.

meggsy

aelitaman wrote: »

Also watch out for another trick. I bet they send you a bill a few days before your 12month join date. The reason is they do not them have to give you the discounts on that bill but the next. They did this to me so check with them and try and get a bill later than your join date and insist the discounts are on it.

Good luck

This happened to me also, I started a thread here http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1569801&highlight=
'npower annual discount'
Would be useful to have more comments on the thread from anyone finding their discounts are being delayed as Consumer Focus have been made aware

Cardew

WhistleBlower wrote: »

I work for NPower and their sculpting makes !!!!!! all sense to me either.

Brave man!

The principle behind sculpting is quite easy to understand.

Some people simply shut off their gas in the summer months, or used never used all their tier 1 units in the summer months when the allocation of tier 1 units were allocated pro-rata..

Thus NPower never collected the full 'standing charge' each year.

BG had the same issue but went some way to tackling this by reducing their tier 1 units from 4,572 to 2680(and upping the price differential over tier2)

Just to reinforce what KimYeovil said above, this sculpting is not the root cause of the OP's problem.

WhistleBlower

Cardew wrote: »

Some people simply shut off their gas in the summer months, or used never used all their tier 1 units in the summer months when the allocation of tier 1 units were allocated pro-rata..

Thus NPower never collected the full 'standing charge' each year.

That...makes much more sense than the official line we're fed at the office.

Thanks!

hubballi

Always check your first bill from a new supplier and your final from your old one. Compare the reads, if they don't match call the new supplier and ask them to re-agree the read.

I did (they estimated a reading from before we had left Atlantic which means they can time travel) My wife phoned again (a few times already) and explained. They said they would amend the bill according to our last and correct reading from Atlantic. Gues what....they sent us another ridiculous bill completely disregarding our last phone conversation. My wife phoned again, they said they were going to treat it as an internal complaint. After some considerable time we got a phone call saying it has being sorted. Then they wrote to us (we were hopeful of the correct bill) just to confirm what they had told us on the phone (Why?) We still await our "correct" bill many weeks later.

How can I be expected to trust them ? As soon as our 12 month lock in is over in month we are getting out. Anyone know of a better and more reliable, honest supplier ? Is it possible ?

1carminestocky

hubballi wrote: »

I did (they estimated a reading from before we had left Atlantic which means they can time travel) My wife phoned again (a few times already) and explained. They said they would amend the bill according to our last and correct reading from Atlantic. Gues what....they sent us another ridiculous bill completely disregarding our last phone conversation. My wife phoned again, they said they were going to treat it as an internal complaint. After some considerable time we got a phone call saying it has being sorted. Then they wrote to us (we were hopeful of the correct bill) just to confirm what they had told us on the phone (Why?) We still await our "correct" bill many weeks later.

How can I be expected to trust them ? As soon as our 12 month lock in is over in month we are getting out. Anyone know of a better and more reliable, honest supplier ? Is it possible ?

Being as they seem to come bottom of any customer satisfaction survey Which have conducted, the ggod thing about moving away from npower is you would be hard pressed to find a worse supplier next time

KimYeovil

... although others are just not as clumsy as nPower. For example, nPower's alteration of tariff years is mainly a sin of not telling. The actual size of the adjustments is no different from the adjustments that every other supplier makes each time they rejig their tiers and tariffs. nPower just engaged in a silly and clumsy retrospective faffing about. Other suppliers probably claw back a lot more money through similar machinations. And with the not needing to tell customers until three months after the price changes they are guilty of just as much retrospective baloney. The difference is you can get your money back from nPower because of their clumsiness. If you are not aware of the fine print you are entitled to nothing if you did not notice other suppliers' alterations.

Viper_7

Still waiting for My Npower bill... been at this property for 9 years,...and the past 3 quarterly bills have all been nill! they have apparently taken two meter readings and one estimate in the past nine months, yet the meter readings apparently have not changed!

I'm looking forward to the correct bill when it finally arrives... and when it does...oh, we will have some fun! as they are in breach of their own contract.

hubballi

I signed up last summer because they guaranteed frozen prices, is this grounds to get my money back ?

Does anyone think I have a case as I don't know what to think other than total confusion?

CAB, Trading standards, consumer direct ?

Total incompetence and sly tactics. How hard is it to process a meter reading.