nPower overcharging?

rdhadley

I have been having a saga with nPower and I would appreciate some advice:

I live in a one bed flat, double glazed, at work all day. I leave some stuff on standby (TV, router, Xbox), have night storage heaters, an old immersion heater (timer, couple of hours a day) and an electric cooker. No gas.

Before Easter, nPower sent me a bill saying I owed them ~2.5K which worked out around £150 a month. I eventually got them to admit that they had transposed my meter and were charging me my day use at the night rate and night use at the day rate. But this still means they think I am using ~£75 a month on electricity. This seems more than a bit steep to me. Am I right to be suspicious? I have asked them to come and check the meter but they refused.

MTIA

(Apologies if this is a FAQ, I did do a search first).

KimYeovil

£75 per month on average is a lot but not ridiculously so (when including heating and cooking.)

What you should do is take daily readings just now while the heating is still switched off to check how much your bits and pieces are costing. You can also take a reading before and after a cooking session.

The E7 rates will be pushing up your costs just now while the heating is not in use.

(£75 could be about 17 kWh per day - a lot but not unthinkable if you have a cooked breakfast and a cooked supper most days.)

KimYeovil

Also check your tariff prices - some nPower electricity tariffs are very expensive - use the comparison sites above to find what others are available in your region.

rdhadley

Thanks. I've just taken a new reading, and they reckon I've used 961 units since 8th June (no heating). Does that sound reasonable?

KimYeovil

Over 70 days that's only 13 units per day - unfortunately not an unreasonable amount.

Rikki

an old immersion heater (timer, couple of hours a day)

Having an immersion heater on for a couple of hours a day is expensive. Can you cut down to 1/2 and hour morning and night depending on when you need it most.

rdhadley

Rikki wrote: »

Having an immersion heater on for a couple of hours a day is expensive. Can you cut down to 1/2 and hour morning and night depending on when you need it most.

Thanks - just done that.

The other complication is that my meter is meant to have 2 readings on it. Mine has 4 (a rate 2, rate 1 that doesn't seem to move, rate 4, and one that looks like an upsidedown F). nPower have finally agreed to send an engineer to take a look as they apparently don't trust my readings.

rdhadley

KimYeovil wrote: »

£75 per month on average is a lot but not ridiculously so (when including heating and cooking.)

(£75 could be about 17 kWh per day - a lot but not unthinkable if you have a cooked breakfast and a cooked supper most days.)

I have a cooked supper but not breakfast each day. However, it is of some comfort that my bill is plausible. Top of my list of jobs is saving up for central heating with a nice new efficient combi boiler to replace my old immersion heater and night storage.

foxgloves

I think your bill is plausible. I wish i could say otherwise as I am definitely OFF Npower at the moment as they enormously increased my direct debits last week which I don't think would have been such a rise if they hadn't neglected to raise them a little last time after I sent in a corrected meter reading. Aaaaaagh! Never mind how assertive & articulate we are, we somehow always end up feeling like the little people with these huge energy firms......guess they've got us by the short & curlies because they know we need their product.

rdhadley

Thanks for the advice all. I guess I'm going to have to lump it. What really concerns me is that my meter has 4 readings on it and they can't tell me what two of them mean! Hopefully the engineer's visit will solve that, although I'm not holding my breath.

Rikki

rdhadley wrote: »

Thanks for the advice all. I guess I'm going to have to lump it. What really concerns me is that my meter has 4 readings on it and they can't tell me what two of them mean! Hopefully the engineer's visit will solve that, although I'm not holding my breath.

Is it a new digital meter?