Highly confused, has anyone heard of this/

Kinnairdy

Answered knock on door today...male displaying id badge claimed to be visiting all house who are showing as not having claimed their discount on fuel supply.

Supplier = Company who generates power at source.
Utility Co = nPower, scottish power et al
Customer = You & I

Anyway the gist of his conversation was...earlier this year some regulation came into force which means gas & elec prices dropped and utility companies should be passing this on to their customers.
He asked to see a bill to look for some particular number that would show our utility provider was passing on these discounts...they are not apparently...he said then that he would explain how we could benefit from these discounts...at no cost to us...nor did it involve changing provider...all we had to do was opt to pay the supplier direct...thus cutting out the middle man (in our case nPower) for gas & elec used...thus saving 30% or more on our bills.
He said npower are charging .13p when it should be around .08p & .07p when it should be around .04p per unit for gas & elec.

His example was...
Supplier sells power to utility company...utility company then sells it on to customers (us)...meter reader calls...sends reading to supplier (NOT to utility co)...supplier bills utility co at whatever rate they charge...utility co then produce their own bills with around 30% added and send out to customers (us)

Now I admit to being totally confused and not a little suspicious...so when he said he could make the change for me immediately and save me up to £150 if I opt to pay by d/d..I decided I needed to find out more before I agree to anything so told him I don't have a bank account...he is going to send me details in the post in about 4-5 week's...giving me time to set up a bank account apparently.

Has anyone heard of this or had cold callers giving the same information...it sounds most peculiar but hey what do I know :-)

Thanks for reading...hope it makes sense.

Dave101t

no cold caller is ever genuine nowadays.

except the poor chap offering me a free shower water-regulating device to reduce water consumption, from the water company. it didnt have my name on it so i refused it much to his bewilderment!

Premier_2

Kinnairdy wrote: »

...He asked to see a bill..

...so when he said he could make the change for me immediately and save me up to £150 if I opt to pay by d/d....

I suppose it makes a change from offering you Ugandan dollars. Did he look like this? :eek:

lemontart

and what company was he from

Your supplier is a utility company and the meter reader sends details to supplier aka your utility company in your case is it npower, various companies produce gas and electricity - he is talking through his rear end and lying through his teeth

I do hope you did not show your bill to him if so call your supplier immediately

penrhyn

He wants to see your bill so he can get hold of your meter point reference number, and current supplier.
He can then go off, sign you up, and the first thing you will know is when you get a sorry you are leaving call from your supplier
By which time he will have got his commission.
Caveat Emptor.

Kinnairdy

Thank's for the replies folks...actually he did have a bit of a resemblance to the chap in the post by Premier...except his suit was lighter...lol
Don't worry I'm not daft enough to give some doorstep caller any info just because he is spinning what sounds like a too good to be true tale...I played the vague femmale card instead...think he got tired of trying to "explain" to me cos he said he would send it all in a letter in 4-5 week's.
Funnily enough he was still walking around my area yesterday...knocking on doors....persistent little booger :-)

C_Mababejive

Liar Liar...pants on fire...

glider3560

Kinnairdy wrote: »

Supplier = Company who generates power at source.
Utility Co = nPower, scottish power et al
Customer = You & I

Just being a little pedantic, but what they referred to as a supplier is actually called the distributor. The utility company is called the supplier. I assume this is part of the "trick" to get you to signup.

His tactic wouldn't work in our area. Our distributor is Western Power Distribution (for electricity) and Wales & West (for gas). Neither of these sell directly to customers, so his theory would go straight down the pan!

What he would have wanted from the bill, as stated earlier, is your supply number (for electricity) and meter point reference number (for gas). With this information, he can switch you to his company. You say you are with npower, who incidentally don't act as an energy distributor anywhere in the country! So his "theory" is a load of ball.

zzzLazyDaisy

Yep, exactly that story was spun to me about two years ago by an N-power rep.

I actually ended up having to shut the door on him with him shouting through the closed door 'don't you want to save money then?'

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.