Great 'Who Pays Compensation If You Ask?' Hunt

finnerty

when i moved in to my house 3 yrs ago I found that both my gas and electric were with N-power, i had to arrange with them for new meters to be fitted as the gas one had been removed and the electric was on a card meter i signed all the paper work and direct debit forms and recieved confirmation of my account set up with them...after a few months i noticed no money had been debited, i phoned them they said i wasn't registered with them and to contact transco ...transco said i was with them <takes breath > I then had to resign up to n-power Direct debits etc ....This went on for 6 months countless phone calls and they still said i wasn't a customer of theirs.

I had used around £250 worth of gas and electric by now as was worried incase they asked for all this money in one go, so i contacted the wonderful people at Energy watch and sent them all the paper work recieved they contacted N-power and within 2 weeks I recieved a letter from n-power, they then sent someone to read my meter and used the reading as my opening balance giving me the previous 6 months worth of gas and electric for free :beer: and also gave my account a £40 credit. Needless to say the next month i switched to another provider and will be avoiding n-power like the plague!

If any thing similar happens to you Beware as I have been told that some companies will do this so that you build up a debt with them, as you are not allowed to switch to another provider if you owe the current one any money

niamhtra66

HuntH1 wrote:

When I was charged incorrectly by BT Broadband for 4 months (after cancelling and switching to much cheaper supplier) I complained and requested compensation for my time, effort and loss of bank interest.

I got nothing.

Hi, i work as a customer advisor for the said company and each advisor is able to give up to £40 as a goodwill gesture to customers who are not "fully resolved", the advisor has to ask all customers if their issue is fully resolved if not they have the opertunity to make the goodwill gesture or pass on to a manager. You will only get this payment if it was a bt error, but allways push for it.You should contact them back and if the adivsor does not resolve your issue ask for a manager call back. A complaint cannot be closed without YOU being fully resolved.

bulchy

Got a letter from Npower on saturday saying they have credited my account with £50, still havent got my dd sorted out, and havent seen a bill with this £50 credit, knowing Npower, the bill will take about 2 months to get here.
Sue

bobtonic

Whilst rummaging through my old papers, I discovered an old refund cheque from Thames Water, dated over 3 years ago (!!!). It was only 25 quid but I thought I'd try and get the money anyway.

I called Thames Water and they said it would send me a new cheque within 10 working days (its standard service time). I didn't hear anything after 3 weeks so I called back and again they said they would send me a cheque within 10 working days. And again, I didn't hear anything....

This whole process carried on for about 3 months, and so I decided to write a strongly-worded letter of complaint, asking to add on an allowance for the money I would have made if I'd paid into the bank 3 years ago (about 5 quid max)

Imagine my surprise and delight when I received a grovelling letter a week or so later from Thames Water apologising for the mix-up, and they not only refunded the cheque and paid an extra £75 for the distress caused to me - RESULT!!!!

If big companies don't follow their own service standards, they are pretty stuffed if someone complains about poor service. Use their rules to your own advantage.

Saving_Slade

Although I am still waiting for compensation and a correct bill.... I changed from Southern Electricity to B Gas 7 months ago and B gas have just messed up from day 1, I am still awaiting a final bill from Southern Electric who are waiting for a meter reading from B G and I still haven't had a correct bill from BG although they have sent me someone else's and two incorrect bills. When I phoned and complained they said they will give me a 10% discount (£65) so you can imagine what size of bill I should be getting....watch this space, a rather snotty email has gone off to them tonight as I refuse to hang on the phone for another half an hour while they read their notes. (Although I must say their staff were very pleasant and remained calm while I went mad....!) :mad:

ler01kjh

There is nothing special about this - it just makes genuine customers less likely to be treated properly by companies, and put everyones prices up. Get a real job

basmiles wrote:

As a 'professional' complainer I bring in around £600 a month from complaints. I travel a lot for work so a great deal of these relate to airlines and hotels. I've just had a refund of £650 from Hilton for a poor stay with many errors, £250 from a US hotel for an error in the rate a couple of weeks ago, £270 for a security alert in another US hotel a few weeks before that. On airlines I've had a free upgrade to first with BA due to their catering dispute, a free trip on Concorde - bought with 100,000 BA miles I was given due to a previous problem. I've scored over £500 from my bank in the last year for mistakes, my Amex Platinum annual fee (£275) has been waived. Most of my clothes are bought by insurance or airline compensation for delayed luggage - always look for complicated and tight airline connections. I'm currently in dispute with a credit card company and a mobile phone company. I would expect at least £100 in compensation from each.

Of course I also play the free balance transfer game investing the money in an ISA and high paying deposit accounts and use a cashback credit card. I'm also a seriel collector of Tesco extra points - I now have enough for my £1,500 watch from Goldsmiths (£375 of Tesco vouchers).

I've kept a record for most of this year and have received around £5,000 in cash or cash equivalent benefits from complaints and careful use of offers.

basmiles

mcgsp

I had a horrible experience trying to leave N-Power to go for a cheaper supplier. It took a year to break the link due to their incompetence and I had to involve EnergyWatch twice. I suggested to EnergyWatch that I should get some sort of compensation for the phone calls, correspondence, frustration etc. They reckoned £30 would be reasonable and N-Power agreed and paid up.

Lea37

We bought a suite from SCS and when it was delivered the delivery men just shoved it through the door, dropped the 3 seater on its back once and just generally took no care with it.
When they'd gone we noticed a scrape on each sofa (we bought a 2 seater and a 3 seater) and we rang the number given on the letter for problems.
They sent out a couple of people to repair the scrapes and then for some unknown reason sent out another guy to fix it again (he was confused too) which was lucky however as he did a much better job.

We're not sure where we stand compensation-wise however as we haven't actually paid yet (it was a buy now, pay next year deal) and we also took out a 5 year cover thingy on it so we think it got fixed by them.

I don't really see why we should pay full price for damaged goods even if they have been repaired well plus we had to wait in on 2 separate days for the work to be done.

Any advice?

Canny_mal

I've been having problems with Bank of Scotland. They kept contradicting themselves about whether the minimum monthly payment on my Macmillan charity credit card was 2% or 3%.

After 3 weeks, 4 phone calls and a number of broken promises of sending me letters and calling me back a customer complaints advisor finally rang me yesterday. She apologised for the confusion, assured me it's 2% and guaranteed me a letter in the next couple of days confirming this fact. I asked about a gesture of goodwill for the inconvenience I'd been caused and first she asked me to give her an idea how much I was expecting. This threw me so rather than blurt out a figure I detailed step by step what I'd had to go through to get the matter resolved. She said she'd credit £20 to me credit card account, which I found very acceptable for what had amounted to 4 phone calls to an 0800 number!

linuxsapien

clark1982 wrote:

I think your sad.. is your life so boring that you don't have anything else to do!

I think your a spoiled little boy that has nothing better to do than to come on forums like this and call people sad for the reason this forum is here for..

Is your life so boring that you have to spend all your youth online?:rotfl: