best for customer satisfaction

dazz

i've been tempted to swap gas and electricity to NPower today with an offer giving £100 credit added to the account at the end of the year, plus an extra £100 after the first 12 months on top.

I'm with EDF who are ok although not amazing at using the readings we supply.

How does npower rank amoung the main providers? I remember swapping to British Gas some years ago which was a complete disaster so i swapped back to EDF (then called Seeboard) after a year.

I know this subject is going to be swamped with all extremes of good and bad experiences, but i'm really after the typical opinion of them.

Thanks..

1carminestocky

30% :eek: in the recent Which customer satisfaction survey. How bad are they? Next bottom were British Gas who STILL beat them by 7%. Nuff said.

Worst supplier – Npower

Npower only scored 30% for customer satisfaction in our survey

For the second survey running, Npower is our worst energy supplier. Despite saying that it had recruited extra staff and invested £200m in its customer service systems since our last survey (October 2008), Npower remains rooted to the bottom, with British Gas – the country’s biggest supplier – not too far behind.In our survey, Npower’s customers gave the supplier a terrible customer satisfaction score of 30%. Npower was rated particularly poorly on its ability to deal with customers' queries and value for money.

PS Is this a new tariff, btw? IIRC, there is a £105 annual discount after 12 months but I wasn't aware of an extra £100 on top of that? Is this in writing?

meggsy

http://www.npower.com/web/At_home/electricity_and_gas/prices_and_discounts/Discounts/index.htm

I really wouldn't advise switching to npower dazz :rolleyes:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1569801&highlight=

kippen_noedel

rather than use anecdotal surveys, where there is no identification process it's better to use the real figures from energywatch.

on a prorata basis, BG complaints are in balance to its customer base. NPower are significantly worse and marginally the best is Scottish & Southern.

NPower failed dramatically in 2 areas, Billing and Misselling to customers.

dazz

Thanks for the replies everyone!

The offer was from one of their people that have stands in shopping centres, and they said the extra £100 was only available that way and not online.

But, i'd suspected npower weren't a good move so its reassuring to hear that.

If npower and bg are at the bottom end, what are at the top end?

Thanks all again!

1carminestocky

Significantly perhaps, in the Which survey both of the top 2 are not members of the Big 6.


Utility Warehouse 83%

Ebico 73%

The highest rated Big 6 supplier is SSE with 53%. HTH.

The energy industry is easily the worst-performing industry in the UK, according to Which's surveys. My theory would be that's because its selling a product that is an absolute necessity so doesn't have to try too hard...

Utility companies: Best utility suppliers

Our latest utilities satisfaction survey of more than 6,000 Which? members found that many of you still aren't happy with the service you're getting from your gas and electricity suppliers.

The average customer satisfaction score for energy suppliers was just 43% (down from 47% in our last survey in October 2008), making this the lowest performing of all the industries covered by our satisfaction surveys. But, despite spiralling energy costs, some companies show that it is possible to keep customers happy.