Npower Central Heating Install Disaster

lucysettle

For anyone following our story, we were contacted the previous week by nPower asking if they could come round to our house with the Installations Manager and the manager of the subcontractor firm for a face to face apology and to sort out our claim. We were told that npower wanted to pass the cost of our claim to the subcontracting firm and this firm had not seen the damage in our house, so wanted to see the house for themselves. Only npower had seen the damage during the install. We declined their offer. We don't want npower in our house again for obvious reasons and we certainly do not want the subcontracting firm anywhere near our house. They said they wanted to apologise in person, and every time either one of us phone up they apologise profusely, but that's being fairly diluted now and without sounding mercenary, I would like this situation to be finished so I can start putting my home to rights.


After we declined they then said they would have an offer to us by Friday this week (5th Feb). My partner phoned our contact in customer relations on Thursday to check everything was in order and I was told that the offer just had to be signed off by the National Installations Manager and we would hear from them about it tomorrow.


Friday came and.... no offer. Instead they have asked for receipts and invoices for our claim, something we've been actively offering (and have many emails to prove it) for about 2 months. I'm assured that this is not a delaying tactic by nPower.


I have since spoken to the National Installations Manager and again refused for them to come to our house again. Instead I am sending all of our prices and invoices (we have nothing to hide) and I have a call booked for 9am next Friday which I'm hoping will bring this all to a conclusion... but I'll believe it when it happens.


I would like to make the point as well, that we have sat on this story for a long time. This happened in November and we got quotes to them in January. We felt we should give npower the chance to respond to this situation effectively and whilst we were collecting the quotes for carpets and painting etc we would not berate them publicly. We are not after the publicity of going to watchdog or the national newspapers and we gave npower a very fair deadline in which to respond to us before we went to the press. They ignored that deadline and so we started blogging and contacting various journalists. But npower forced us to do this by not responding quickly and effectively. Customer relations can be as easy as picking up the phone and checking if we managed to get the house sorted for christmas or if we needed any floor coverings to get us through... when you're on your hands and knees scrubbing the lino in the kitchen with bleach to get some of the stains off (which didn't work) you do feel a bit abandoned and a reassuring phonecall would have gone a long way.