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NPower - Trying to bully us into paying someone elses bill. Please help!!

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Dranny
Dranny Posts: 50 Forumite
Part of the Furniture 10 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
Hi everyone –

Myself and the OH bought our new house in Oct 06, and got moved in early November 06.

There were prepayment meters for both Gas and Electric in the cellar (Gas – NPower, Electric – British Gas). Both supplies were “off” as we didn’t have keys/cards for the meters.

It took a day or two to organise guys from the relevant companies to come round and zero the meters, and give us new keys, so we could get up and running. We got this done whilst we were still out of the house, from a moving in point of view, so it wasn’t a mess about really.

Anyway, we stuck the normal £10 or £20 on each card and away we went.

I called NPower to get the gas meter removed, and to go normal credit meter – they wanted £120 (ish) for the honour, so I declined.

I called Scottish Power (the cheapest tariffs at the time) and they said they wanted £150 I think) per meter, but this was put in holding for 12 months, and then we get it back interest and all. I declined this too, as we didn’t have £300 to spend really, and besides, we’ve never had prepayment meters before – and have never had credit problems in the past.

British Gas were next on the list. They said they’d change both for free. So we set up getting changed over, early January. Basically 6 weeks to change from NPower to BG, then a week or so to get the meters out, and new in. BG were probably not the cheapest, but free meter changing – then immediately setting up a transfer to Scottish Power was my idea – and that’s where we’re up to with that.

Anyway – we were a customer of NPower for maybe 10 weeks.

In this period I think we put in roughly £500 worth of credit on our Gas meter.

Now, our house is bigger than the old one (roughly twice) so I expected maybe £50 per month bills on the gas – say £60 for pre-payment, but we were shovelling in nearly £20 every 3 days.

We called NPower and asked if we we're “paying off someone else’s debt”.

The answer was “definitely not”, even though we’ve seen NPower letters to the ex-landlord of our house asking for nearly £700 as his tenants hadn’t paid. We’ve also had letters from debt recovery companies regarding the previous tenants for all manner of stuff e.g. cars, catalogue stuff, loans etc. so we didn’t really believe NPower.

Then we asked for the meter to be checked – see if it was dicky. They sent a diagnostic card for us, which we did the necessary with, and returned to them. We called back to check the situation – “Nothing wrong with the meter”.

So anyway – we kind of wrote it off as a lost situation and when we switched over to BG, we had like £2 credit with NPower – good riddance we said.

About 2 weeks ago, we received a bill from NPower for £62.

My OH called them and asked what for.

The low-down was that it could be from a previous customer, but as they now had our name, and we lived in the house, they wanted the £62 from us.

This after they denied we were paying off an old bill at the start.

The guy had the audacity to basically say “yeah it’s not your bill, but do you want to pay anyway?” He basically got told where to go fish.

This bill has since hit the doormat twice since, with debt recovery companies being threatened – even though it’s not our bill.

I’m not even having the “standing charge” theory, as that’s taken off your card’s balance when you load up more credit – besides £62 over roughly 10 weeks equates to roughly 90p a day standing charge. That’s insane.

So, we’ve been told the case is being “looked into” by NPower, but we expect nothing productive as they are a bunch of jokers.

My question really, is what can I do, to officially tell them to go away???

It isn’t our bill and we won’t be paying it. They keep coming back with the same though and it’s getting to my OH, as she’s stressed with work etc.

Sorry for the long post, but any help would be appreciated.

Cheers, Dranny

PS: The BG Electric meter that was already here ate roughly £30per month – the same as what we were paying via DD to Ebico monthly at our old property, so I have no complaints against them at all. They’ve been nothing but good so far.

Comments

  • tripled
    tripled Posts: 2,883 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    Give them this opportunity to resolve this, if they don't then make a complaint to energywatch.

    Even if there was a recovery rate on the meter, it seems a bit high, I've never heard of one being set as high as £40 per week before.

    If you have the meter reading from when you moved in and the reading from when the switch to BG went through, you should be able to work out roughly how much you should have been charged.

    Make sure you keep any receipts as you may need those to claim back any overpayments.
  • Dranny
    Dranny Posts: 50 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    We don't have any meter readings or receipts really.

    As you don't really anticipate the problems.

    We've gone past caring about the actual money we put on the Gas meter - but the £62 bill isn't getting paid by us.
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