Shocked By Npower Letter

john0612

letter dropped through the door today saying there increasing my DD from £30 to £76.00 !!!!!!!!! .

We only stay in a small 3bed mid terrace and the heating hasn't even been on in the past 3/4 months only the hot water and the hob are being used but THAT kind of increase is just rediculous.

I tried phoning them but, put on the usuall hold line saying 15mins to wait etc...., tried saynoto0870 too but number is always engaged.

Probably need to switch now and i havn't even been with them a year:mad:

Tallymanjohn

Have you checked your meter against any recent bills? Are the figures estimated or actual? You need to sit down & work out whether the increase is justified to keep pace with power usage.- if you don't check it now you may find there's a big unexpected bill at the end of the year. Ours (with Southern Electric) went from £52 to £125/month - I did the calculations & we agreed on £80/month which has covered us so far, but winter's around the corner!!

Cardew

john0612 wrote:

letter dropped through the door today saying there increasing my DD from £30 to £76.00 !!!!!!!!! .

We only stay in a small 3bed mid terrace and the heating hasn't even been on in the past 3/4 months only the hot water and the hob are being used but THAT kind of increase is just rediculous.

I tried phoning them but, put on the usuall hold line saying 15mins to wait etc...., tried saynoto0870 too but number is always engaged.

Probably need to switch now and i havn't even been with them a year:mad:

It is standard practice to set your DD too low initially to entice you to change to that company. This is because the operators are on commission and they will get you to swop at all costs.

You have almost certainly built up a big debit balance in the year you have been with NPower and now they are just setting your DD at the correct level AND paying back what you owe.

You can't switch anyway until you have paid off your debt.

clayts

I got the same - an increase on my gas from £14 to £32, which is just ludicrous. I've only been with them a few months, and they obviously have no idea what I'll use in the year. Am now frantically trying to find my last year's bills (which I used when I went onto Uswitch) but cannot find them now

There's only little old me in this house, and I only use the gas fire and gas oven and maybe central heating (or more specifically the boiler) about once or twice per week for an hour.

I aim to ring them up and haggle with them.

pboae

I used to be with NPower, I got a letter off them saying they wanted to change my DD from £35 a month to £7, even though I was about £100 in arrears. I queried it and said I thought it should be £40, they insisted on £7 because 'the computer would be right', but eventually agreed to leave it at £35, and then started taking £25 instead. I gave up and switched.

espresso

john0612 wrote:

letter dropped through the door today saying there increasing my DD from £30 to £76.00 !!!!!!!!! .

The DD amount is irrelevant unless you know how much you are using and therefore how much it is costing!

Start reading the meters yourself and enter the information into a calculator to find out for yourself how much it is costing and how much you need to pay.

Provide actual readings and get an updated invoice which will also show any debt that you may have built up on your account. If you have any debt, this will have to be paid off along with the energy that you are consuming.

HTH

MBN

Be very careful with NPower, and check your bills all the time. There was a mistake in our latest bill, and luckily hubby spotted the mistake, and called them to complain. According to them, we were almost £70 in debit. After hubby's call, they recalculated everything, and guess what, now we're almost £50 in credit (as we thought we should be, since we are 'light' electricity and gas users)! :eek:

Otherwise, I can't fault them. They've always been very cooperative with us - no problems until now whatsoever - and they called us to apologise for the mistake with the bill. But, you never know, so don't rely on their cooperation and accuracy, and check everything.

Northern_Girl_4

After reading one of the posts concerning n power and incorrect bills I decided to have a closer look at mine I discovered that in September I was only given the single fuel discount of £17.50 instead of the duel fuel of £60. I telephoned them and they couldnt understand how it had happened (computer error) and they would reimburse the difference on the next statement! So it is worth checking your statements.

MarkyMarkD

I don't believe that DDs are generally set at low amounts. In my experience, they've actually been set around the right level or too high in the first instance.

The reason many people (myself included) have seen huge increase in the DD payments requested is that prices have risen significantly. For many months, most customers have been under-paying. npower seek to recover the under-payment over a relatively short period - typically six months but can be even shorter - whereas other companies spread it over the next year.

If you under-pay by 20% due to price increases, and also under-pay because their initial estimate was too low, it's easy for your required DD to double during the remaining part of the budget plan year.

As espresso points out, all that matters is how much your usage is actually costing - the monthly payments are just payments against the true bill. I don't honestly care if I'm under-paying and building up a debt - it's better in my bank account than in theirs.

MBN

Northern_Girl wrote:

After reading one of the posts concerning n power and incorrect bills I decided to have a closer look at mine I discovered that in September I was only given the single fuel discount of £17.50 instead of the duel fuel of £60. I telephoned them and they couldnt understand how it had happened (computer error) and they would reimburse the difference on the next statement! So it is worth checking your statements.

I'm glad I could help (if mine was the post you were referring to ). Like I said, in all our previous dealings with NPower, they've been really helpful, and morever, they are still the cheapest where we live. Nevertheless, they made an error which would have been very costly for us. I didn't understand much about the wrong bill, but hubby did, and he was fuming, really really angry when he noticed the mistake. I'm so glad it's all been recalculated - otherwise the dual fuel discount would have been rendered meaningless by their mistake.

Always check.

mbailey

john0612 wrote:

letter dropped through the door today saying there increasing my DD from £30 to £76.00 !!!!!!!!! .

We only stay in a small 3bed mid terrace and the heating hasn't even been on in the past 3/4 months only the hot water and the hob are being used but THAT kind of increase is just rediculous.

I tried phoning them but, put on the usuall hold line saying 15mins to wait etc...., tried saynoto0870 too but number is always engaged.

Probably need to switch now and i havn't even been with them a year:mad:

I had one of them also.

It said my elec DD will change from £20 to £91!

The original £20 was wrong, but by my calculations on my usage it should be around £45 per month.

I have tried to get through to npower on the phone but no luck yet so I emailed them tonight - not sure how long it will take for a reply!