NPower Blatant Misselling

Terrylw1

backfoot wrote: »

'But that's what the sales agents do to get their commission'.

Are you telling me that the office based staff get commission?

'I'm not sure, I think they do on the Retention Team'.

Ah, the usual root of all utility sales evil - commission!

Retention teams are bound to get commission, or else they wouldn't work there. There would be no motivation for money grabbing sales agents who work like this.

Commission has been frequently behind all this for a long time.

I remember a case of a Supplier who's commission based door knockers were signing everyone up on the wrong payment type since they got paid more commission for it. So, the customers had months of hell sorting all that out.

The question is, whether getting complaints about misselling cuts their commission. Since they probably pull in loads of business, I'm pretty sure the usual company stance will be in place "don't worry John Smith, you're pulling loads of trade so we can forgive the odd complaint".

Thats why a regulator is needed to be checking and investigating all this. We haven't got one.

Ofgem let Suppliers "self monitor" based on a guideline for many things I know of that directly impact customers. They don't monitor this and you will often see statements on their industry literature that quotes "trust".

However, as pointed out in other threads, a lot of Ofgem staff are ex-Supplier staff. Elexon are the same.

Terrylw1

backfoot wrote: »

My complaint has been passed to the Npower 'Sales Agent's Investigation Team'.


'At least, you had the information before you to show that our costs were much higher and you didn't change.'

Yes, but this is a very serious case of misselling and breach of Trading Standards. It shouldn't happen.

'But that's what the sales agents do to get their commission'.

I thought it worth highlighting this bit.

Their response to your question about a serious beach, being replied to as "it's how we make our money"...

If thats the attitude of the sales investigation team, it's not wonder the sales staff are doing these things...:eek::eek::eek:

backfoot

Thanks guys.

My feeling is that we have a more systematic abuse going on here. This is an office based call centre and they will be trained to operate to a pattern and use scripts.

I want to get to the bottom of this to prevent losses for the unwary.

forgotmyname

Wonder why i have been signed upto NPower twice now, Both times with unusual names.

I never speak to them on the doorstep so wonder if the reps just try it on?

davidgmmafan

"Since they probably pull in loads of business, I'm pretty sure the usual company stance will be in place "don't worry John Smith, you're pulling loads of trade so we can forgive the odd complaint"."

With respect I dis-agree. I can see where you are coming from and why you would think that, but I honestly believe it will cost them in complaints than this sort of behaviour generates. In fact I can't see how it would be otherwise, I'm not saying everyone will complain. Most people will accept it, but the ones that do will need some kind of goodwill gesture, or to be transferred back to the previous supplier with no usage billed. Then there's the time of the complaints team or managers etc etc.

So on paper if loks like wow this guy generated X pounds, but in fact his contribution to the company is negative if it was measured properly.

Terrylw1

davidgmmafan wrote: »

"Since they probably pull in loads of business, I'm pretty sure the usual company stance will be in place "don't worry John Smith, you're pulling loads of trade so we can forgive the odd complaint"."

With respect I dis-agree. I can see where you are coming from and why you would think that, but I honestly believe it will cost them in complaints than this sort of behaviour generates. In fact I can't see how it would be otherwise, I'm not saying everyone will complain. Most people will accept it, but the ones that do will need some kind of goodwill gesture, or to be transferred back to the previous supplier with no usage billed. Then there's the time of the complaints team or managers etc etc.

So on paper if loks like wow this guy generated X pounds, but in fact his contribution to the company is negative if it was measured properly.

Yes, I agree. However, since we are talking fragmented processes a lot of the chasing up is done prior to complaints channel's and any good customer service dept will stop it advancing so the cost gets split into various business streams, which may not liaise.

I can't speak for all but I can in case of my own experience in the industry. There tends to be a lot of complaining staff & managers. None of them have an effective voice in large companies like these. At some point it all comes to a head, usually based on some nasty complaints and the outsource company gets dumped. They just move on unchecked to the next company to sell on behalf of and the Suppliers can say they have taken all necessary action.

In this case of this Supplier, my observation is based on the poor attitude displayed by the sales investigation team that backfoot has contacted.

From my experience in these large companies, the ethos can often be "sell, sell, sell" and the complaints/queries are swallowed up in operating costs which are largely unknown. This market isn't good at reducing process waste in my opinion and the whole backend settlements end of the industry is pretty poor.

If the company has a good attitude to customer service or is interested in reducing long term costs / improving brand, etc...then the should care about misselling. It's just in my experience (of some Suppliers only), they are not very concerned.

backfoot

I would imagine nearly all energy misselling goes undetected. It's only when the amounts get big does it come back to bite them after customer's see the alarming rise in DD's to catch up.In the more marginal cases the effects are probably seen 12 months down the line and most people just don't have the understanding to see what happened.

So I would side with the view, on energy selling, that they accept a 'volume' of complaints' as being part of the process.The tricky thing for them is keeping the lid on all this because it is very emotive.Quite rightly because the selling process invariably means that they are actually defrauding ordinary people if their offerring isn't the cheapest.

Finally, the Regulator has woken up to this and if you look at the link I posted earlier, there is some talk of banning companies abusing the 'rules'.The clear tactic to defend themselves has been to put in place a so called Code Of Practice. If you study it, the effect is to divorce the company from the selling agent so that if any cases of abuse are found,they can put the blame down to them and be seen to have a management process. Secondly, and this was a new one to me,the Sales Investigation Team, has been set up to enforce this Division even more.The few words they said to me were very telling.It's them 'nasty commission based folk'.

The trouble with NPower is that they have developed an extraordinary ability to continually c!!k everything up. Their modus operandi starts out with dodgy products, (which takes some doing with energy),then when things go wrong and people notice,the UK Management bunker up in their silos and try to bluff it out.The targets set by RWE are demanding and Npower struggle to meet them.

Only the most corrupt of organisations could possibly have fought the Gas Sculpting issue for so long. Even now they continue to try and find ways to minimise the payback to customer's from whom they stole money.If you have ever dealt with them regarding a complaint, the same attitude has reached the complaint handlers (customer service .....:rotfl:).In my experience of not just an isolated case,they actually haven't got a clue how to see the complaint as possibly being genuine. It's as if someone's trying it on with them.I've no idea why because as david said above, its totally counter productive.

I am so interested in this case because I think it's different to the doorstep agent issue,where they can and do pass the blame down.I know they will try and do it with their telesales agents, but I don't think it so easy to do with office based teams. These people will have Supervisors, be scripted, monitored in terms of results. The misselling in my case wasn't a loose cannon. He was following the process to get you to change to a product which isn't the cheapest. He used tactics and lies which most people can't possibly challenge unless you have all the data.

I still haven't heard anything back, so perhaps they may have tied up my report here with the complaint and are taking extra care.Then again, that would be giving them a lot more credit than they normally deserve.;)

davidgmmafan

I am sad to say the sales agent complaints process is IMO very poor. They used to say things to us frontline guys like oh we can't raise a complaint as its been a year. This is madness when the reassessments are done six monthly and therefore it is not uncommon to NOT have a reassessment on the first bill. If a customer starts in Winter, so you only have Winter cons to go on, reassessed for balance and consumption would be very difficult.

When challenged they back down on that, but to me the right approach would be to adopt the old maxim that prevention is better than a cure. Instead of finding reasons to knock back complaints, eg we are actualy cheaper (by £5 over the year) when that is still very much different to what the sales person said simply won't cut it. Even if every such complaint were dilligently investigate and action was taken as pointed out above most people will simply have moved on having pocketed vast sums of commission.

Therefore the thing to do is have someone, one guy would do, to just to go thier call center and listen to the speil they give. It wouldn't be hard to find breaches of basic rules like reading out the contract, they simply cannot be doing that right based on some of the stories you hear.

Ok this guy isn't going to catch everyone, but it would put the cat amongst the pigeons enough if it were random.

BTW I object when industry figures say switching volumes are an indication of a competitive market. This is only correct if there aren't huge numbers of people going around mis-selling. So far I have not been persuaded that this is the case.

Jesthar

I just had one of their doorstep people call touting their £200 discount offer. Having an innate distrust of nPower (a friend was TWICE the victim of their cold callers she'd sent packing signing her up to switch illegally), never having heard of that offer and having nothing pressing to do, I decided to have a little fun. Highlights as follows:

• He'd never neard of Ebico - EquiGas and EquiPower yes, the company, no
• Bills to hand - check! No guessing required, sorry And yes, that is under £40 a month I'm paying dual fuel - and very much in credit with.
• "With our discounts we'll actually be paying you to have electricity, and send you a cheque each month" - oh, rly? (his spreadsheet really did say -£2, but "we have to charge you £5 a month anyway as the banks won't let us charge you less or credit you by direct debit instead, so we send you the money back as cheques")
• Him claiming (repeatedly) that nPower and all regulated industries had no choice but to be 100% ethical in all practices due to OFGEN rules :rotfl:
• Revealing the regulated utility industry insider information I have due to my job - you should have seen his face fall
• Realising just how much I'd hooked *him* when I spotted he'd already got a signup form and information sheet out and part filled in under the bills I'd given him
• Swiping said forms when taking my bills back
• Spotting the direct debit discount stated in his signup leaflet was only £100, and asking why. Cue much bluster about getting an estimate next year and signing up again for another bonus etc.
• Trying to get him to explain why all these different discounts and bonuses were better than simply having a lower tarrif price in the first place
• Telling him I always do my research, and plenty of it, before buyng anything
• Him trying to persuade me that 'doing research is pointless, as 60% of the time that means you miss out on the best there-and-then deals'
• Then offering to call back the next day, before realising it was Sunday.
• Me telling him not to worry, as I wouldn't be switching anyway until nPower changed their way of doing business
• Keeping him talking for over an hour, and therefore away from others - priceless

~Jes

Terrylw1

davidgmmafan wrote: »

BTW I object when industry figures say switching volumes are an indication of a competitive market. This is only correct if there aren't huge numbers of people going around mis-selling. So far I have not been persuaded that this is the case.

Agreed with you, as they seem to forget about the numerous customers who switch to get away from poor service...there will be lots of those!