npower dodgy door to door practices?

matttaylor

I had a young chap knock on my door last night claiming to be from npower and waiving a clipboard around.
He said I had been identified as someone who was paying more than I should be and would be eligible for their new £200 discount. All he needed to do was confirm the supplier numbers from my latest bills.

He didn't seem bothered by the fact that I had only just switched to EDF a couple of months ago.
Well a weaker person would have bended to his will but I wasn't going give him what he wanted when I had no intention of switching.

The whole thing including his sales technique seemed a little bit dodgy to me. I've heard in the past of people being switched supplier without knowing it by these types of sales people.
Could this have been another case?
Are your supplier numbers all they need?

Regards,

Matt

DebDay

Yeah when I signed for NPower in August they told me I would be given £100 after one year. When I decided to leave them they phoned and offered me £100 after one year. I said I was supposed to be already on that scheme and she didn't say it was on top of the other £100, she just said 'OK'. lol

ricky9

The sales agent was right £100 welcome bonus paid after 1st Nov 2010 and £100 dual fuel discount because i pay direct debit after 12 months so £200.
I signed up last week to them and they do a thing called a welcome call to verify this.

Plushchris

I bet its only on their standard (expensive) tariff though isnt it?

DebDay

Ahh well I didn't qualify for £100 dual fuel direct debit discount as I am on a Prepayment meter.

mimo1

Npower are rotten to the core. I advise people to avoid them like the plague.

I joined them when Greenpeace touted their green energy tariff. Eventually I got fed up with their rudeness- the final straw was when I went on holiday for two weeks, and when I returned I found a bill and a separate letter from their debt collection department threatening to send bailiffs round to my flat, just because I hadn't paid the bill yet!

So I paid the bill, and left for Ecotricity, telling Npower why I was fed up with them. But once I'd left, they got far worse.
My account was transferred to Ecotricity, but 6 months later I got a huge bill from Npower, for several hundred pounds, acting as if they were still my supplier! It took me a month to sort that out with help from Ecotricity.

Then, Npower sales department started ringing my home phone at least once a week, and cold calling on an almost weekly basis, trying to get me to go back to Npower. I wrote a letter to complain of this harrassment, and it stopped briefly.

Then they started again when their sales team blitzed my neighbourhood with nuisance cold callers. I live in a gated development, and they would trick people into letting them into the gates. Their teenage staff would say "Hi it's gas and electricity here to read the meters", disguising the fact that they were from Npower whenever able, then come in and go round knocking on every door with their sales pitch. The whole point of a gated development is to keep cold callers out, so this was an abuse of power.

I got into the habit of asking which company they were from, and they would always say really quickly in a sing-song voice "Npowergasandelectricity" so you couldn't even here the word Npower. I often have to say "Who?" a few times until I can understand that they're Npower. It's a tad deceitful. I then tell them that I'm not with Npower any more and usually have to turn the intercom off when they start reeling off their sales pitch.

I told Ecotricity about it, and they told me that they have heard a lot of similar stuff about Npower. They said that Npower even come around and read other people's meters, people who aren't even their customers! Ecotricity have been great and match the prices of the other suppliers, without the harrassment and phoney bills. I strongly recommend Npower customers to switch to them.

It's saturday morning, a year on from when I left Npower. They woke me up this morning by buzzing me for entry. Npower are indeed the worst energy supplier. I am a young man, and I fear for how their amoral sales team must be ripping off old people as we speak. My father, who lives the other side of the country from me, has had problems with them overbilling and weaving their inexplicable webs of deceipt already.