Utilities Bonkers Award

Hern

They are, of course, all bonkers. Venal, and bonkers. Well: all the major utility companies we've ever had the misfortune to deal with.

We're currently in the process of transferring from Scottish Power to Npower because Npower are going to give us £100 as a welcome bonus (which they'll dispute when the time comes) and moneysupermarket is going to give us £30 for arranging the switch (which it will dispuite when the time comes.)

We're leaving Scottish Power because our contract is up and we don't like being treated as stupid by them. Might as well take our custom somewhere else and be treated as stupid there instead.

Couple of weeks back, Npower wrote to assure us of the finest in customer service. Funny, that's what Scottish Power once said.

Today we have a "welcome letter" from nPower, or Npower, or however you're supposed to faff around with the daft name and its initials, saying the transfer process to them is almost complete and that they have luvvly welcome bonuses for us, foremost of which -- and it's highlighted in the letter with a big colour photo -- is a chance to win a Nokia N8 smartphone, oh my gosh golly wow. All we need do is go online to npower.com/hello and whoa-hey! You're in it to win it!!

The letter is dated December 13th and from David Bond, Customer Loyalty Manager, Npower. In prominent coloured type beneath the picture of the Nokia smartphone is:

Closing date: 2nd December 2011.

Yeah. That's the way to establish and maintain customer loyalty, Mr Bond. Justifies your salary countless times over. We're so-ooo glad part of the bill we'll be paying your employer goes towards helping you to remain in employment. (Though secretly, we don't think you're a real person at all. Aren't you the same computer that used to pretend to sign all those letters from Reader's Digest prize promotions, years ago?)

Blackdog

Thanks for your post. It made me laugh out loud. All we can do is laugh or we will go mad with frustration. I switched last year with Energyhelpline who confirmed that they had received my instruction and gave me a reference number etc and then refused to pay me my cashback as they said I hadn't switched through them, mad!

snowcat53

And people accuse the public sector of employing people in non jobs...

Thanks Hern, made me laugh!

Hern

Blackdog wrote: »

Thanks for your post. It made me laugh out loud. All we can do is laugh or we will go mad with frustration. I switched last year with Energyhelpline who confirmed that they had received my instruction and gave me a reference number etc and then refused to pay me my cashback as they said I hadn't switched through them, mad!

Same thing happened to us with Uswitch and a crate of free wine. We never got it. If it's still in their possession it'll have gone off anyway, I doubt it was ever of a decent vintage. Since then we've learned to screen capture every transaction including the browser log of sites involved and time / date, cookies expiry etc. It only failed once with something to do with Santander, but as everything fails if Santander is involved, we weren't too surprised.

Having to screen capture everything is tedious but as snowcat53 rightly says, we're dealing with the infallible private sector here, the one that's going to save the country from bankruptcy due to its brilliance. But perhaps NPower's Mr Bond was recently recruited from a Town Hall.