NPower Would this be allowed??

Sharon30

I signed to NPower from Scottish Power around 18 months ago for dual gas&electricity. At the time based on my readings current statements and tariff from Scottish Power I was told by the agent that my monthly DD with NPower would be £98 per month, a while later I received a letter saying they had underestimated so my DD would increase to £129. I don't feel I'm using any more gas or electricity than I did before and tried to make sure that things are being switched off etc. A couple of months back I received a better saying that I had again used more and that my DD was changing to £182 per month to reflect this. The problem is that I've been off work sick and that my ssp has ran out and this month's payment due to be taken on 1st I'm not going to have the funds. Do you think it's possible to ask for the DD to be cancelled for 1 month and for me to call and make the £182 payment by switch maybe 1-2 weeks late and then set the DD back up?? I've never had to ask anything like this before and I've never missed a payment is just I need a little bit longer to get the money together. Just thought I would see if anyone had done this before I call them up.

Thanks

Cardew

You can ask, but the DD is an automatic process and I don't know if they can(even if they wanted to) delay a DD.

Bear in mind that if your DD is not honoured for lack of funds, your bank might raise a charge.

A tactic that might work is to cancel your DD now. When NPower contact you about this you can apologise and say(????- mix up?) and that you will set up your DD straight away - that will 'buy you' a couple of weeks.

KimYeovil

Rather than cancelling if you have enough time (before the next payment is due) the safest bet is to request to change the day of the month the payment is made - ie, reschedule it to come out the day before the day you make the request. Eg, phone up today and say you want to change the payment day to the 21st of every month. That'll buy you more than four weeks.

The trouble with cancelling is that you may forfeit the 'discount'.

Perelandra

That's very sneaky, KimYeovil.

I wonder if you could do the same thing the next month, and change it on, say, the 17th to the 16th?

(ok, so there's a big downside to this- you're building up a debt balance... and the agent might not let you do it of course!)

KimYeovil

I did it twice in a row with BT once.

caveat_emptor

Sharon30 it sounds as though you have been conned by an npower agent. The agent gets commission so will give you a low estimate to sign up, then will 'arrange' for the estimate to be increased. An increase of 30% over the original estimate if your usage hasn't increased is not acceptable. Go through the nPower complaints procedure for redress and if no joy to the Energy Ombudsman. I have a bee in my bonnet about this as there is a lot of it going on and I've recently been caught by Scottish Power who put me on an 'erroneous transfer' back to my original supplier..