Npower SOL price hike: across the SOL board, or just for SOL14?

kje_2

Had the same letter. nPower want to charge me £229 per year standing charge for gas which means that my monthly payment will more than double. I expected it to go up due to using more over the, colder than normal, Winter but doubling. The comparison sites show Sol18 and Scottish Power online energy saver 9 dual fuel as the cheaper options for me. If nPower don't let me switch to Sol18 then I'm off. Think it's £60 cashback at Quidco for Scottish Power, so may switch anyway.

Doctor_Who

Same here....SOL 14 and huge increase in gas standing charge. Found Scottish Power Online Energy Saver 9 is slightly cheaper for me than current SOL 14 prices AND Topcashback/Scottish Power are offering £130 cashback for dual fuel.....so switched yesterday and cashback tracked this morning. Will be taking up nPower "offer" of not being affected by the price rise if switching supplier!

slewin

Same letter here. AFAICS I'm only about £60 pa worse off but I don't like all this fiddling about with the tariff. Maybe I'm just cynical but I'm guessing they've been too successful in getting people to improve their insulation, draught proofing etc so they're now trying to make sure that reducing the gas you use for heating doesn't actually save you much money by shifting a lot of the cost from the gas units themselves onto the standing charge. Before this change saving 1kWh was worth 3.425p to me, now it's only 2p.

Scottish Power looks like my best deal too and by a bit of good luck my discount anniversary date was last week. Bye bye npower .

Steve

notbritishgas

notbritishgas wrote: »

Got my letter yesterday as well. I am going to ring them today to check my anniversary date with intention of changing supplier.
Did they offer the SoL18 without any pressure from you in order to keep your custom as it should only be available to new customers.
I suppose I would be tempted to stay as SoL18 comes out top on my comparison sites.
Difficult decision as I am fed up with Npower's tactics.

Answered my own question.
Rang Npower and with no trouble they said could switch me to SoL 18 immediately.
Said not at moment as I wanted to do more research.
Having now done the maths it would appear that until September SoL18 would be much more expensive than the standard tariff they are going to switch me to. This is because of their sculpting whereby on the standard tariff from May to Sep only 46 kwh per month are charged at the high rate, whilst on SoL 18 they charge 36.82p per day standing charge.
The electric does work out cheaper than the standard tariff as there is no sculpting of the higher kwh.
Having said all of that the standard tariff is £118 per year more expensive than my present SoL10.
So I think time to change, EoN NSC Fixed V8 comes out second after SoL18, saving me £112 on my present SoL10. Any comments on that one?

sam1970

iam on SOL 10 for gas and SOL 16 for elect. i received the letter and i phoned npower yesterday..very helpful lady on the phone who calculated my annual usage and advised to change both to SOL 18 as the best option..i asked her to give time to think...what people think of this? I am not going to be fussed with all the hassel of moving to another supplier if the saving is less than £50 year

Doctor_Who

Phoned nPower today to say I was leaving SOL 14 due to the price increase and asked them to make sure I will not be affected by the price rise (as their letter spells out). The representative didn't know anything about this, but said it must be right if it's on the letter! I had to push for a note to be put on my account saying I was leaving and would not pay the higher prices from 7th May. I asked why I hadn't been offered an automatic move to SOL 18 instead of the standard tariff and got some rubbish about them not being able to do this since it would prevent people shopping around on comparison sites!

glider3560

Doctor_Who wrote: »

Phoned nPower today to say I was leaving SOL 14 due to the price increase and asked them to make sure I will not be affected by the price rise (as their letter spells out). The representative didn't know anything about this, but said it must be right if it's on the letter! I had to push for a note to be put on my account saying I was leaving and would not pay the higher prices from 7th May. I asked why I hadn't been offered an automatic move to SOL 18 instead of the standard tariff and got some rubbish about them not being able to do this since it would prevent people shopping around on comparison sites!

Write them a letter. I believe the contract states that the notification must be in writing.

Doctor_Who

The letter nPower sent says "If you decide to choose another supplier we'll make sure you're not affected by these changes until you leave us. You must let us know within 20 working days - please call us on 0845 074 2683 (8am to 8pm Monday to Friday and 8am to 6pm Staurday) or write to Customer Service."
When I called they were not aware of this statement! Anyway I now have a note on my account agreeing to this.