N Power charged us incorrect day and night rates

lemoncurd76_2

N Power have just phoned us telling us that we owe them £662 as they have been incorrectly calculating our day and night rates for electricity.

It seems that when they installed the meter in 2008 they set up the dates the wrong way round and have been charging us too little ever since.

Now they are demanding all of the money back, can they do this backdated since 2008??!

We have always given them meter readings when they have asked, and pay by DD, always adjusting our monthly payment to whatever amount they have advised.

Does anyone have any advice, would be greatly appreciated as I have just had a baby and am currently not working, so £600 is going to be hard to come up with..

Thanks

jalexa

lemoncurd76 wrote: »

Now they are demanding all of the money back, can they do this backdated since 2008??!

Probably not. Study the "Billing Code"
http://www.energy-uk.org.uk/publication/finish/43-code-of-practice-for-accurate-bills/412-the-code-of-practice-for-accurate-bills-back-billing-for-domestic-customers.html

Note that you can be (correctly) billed for the last 12 months so you need to scrutinise the "£662 bill" for dates. If that (as a lump sum) would put you in payment difficulty ask for payment terms over 12 months.

Before you go any further make sure you take a photograph of your meter.

lemoncurd76_2

Thanks for your reply. The £662 covers underpayments for the 4 year period, so I will look at the billing code as you suggest and hopefully we will only need to pay the last 12 months due to it being their mistake.

SneaksyWhippet

I wouldn't trust any of nPower's calculations based on my own experience. Check thoroughly through as best you can to make sure they've done it right!

For years they were convinced I had an economy 7 meter, despite me telling them over and over again that I didn't. Each time they had a meter reading (either taken by them or me; their meter readers had even seen the meter) they charged me for the units at the peak economy 7 rate rather than the standard tariff rate. My bills were huge! Eventually I got them to recalculate about four year's worth of bills and credit the overpayment back to my account (it was hundreds). This is the reason I have now switched providers!

Fingers crossed for you that you only have to pay twelve months due to their own incompetence.

Premier_2

Unless you have previously advised the supplier of the error (and they failed to act) then you will have to pay for what you consumed.

After all the meter is in your property, not the suppliers,

Have you really not checked your meters and the billing info for 4 years?

lemoncurd76_2

Premier- it's not that we haven't checked the meter readings for 4 years. They have sent people to read meters over this time and the figures tie up with the units consumed on the invoices. The problem is they have incorrectly got day and night units confused.
All we see on the meter is that we are consuming 'rate 1' and 'rate 2' units. On the invoice they translate this as 'day' or 'night' readings and have charged us accordingly, but now they have decided that they have in fact being charging us the wrong way round, if that makes sense?

jalexa

Premier wrote: »

Unless you have previously advised the supplier of the error (and they failed to act) then you will have to pay for what you consumed.

A nonsense argument IMO, unsubstantiated by the "Billing Code".

After all the meter is in your property, not the suppliers,

True but irrelevant.

Have you really not checked your meters and the billing info for 4 years?

A (much) better question is how many meter reader reads have been taken in the 4 years.

[Deleted User]

my company have routinely been doing this for years,reading rate 1 and imputting it into the night rate when it should be going into the day field on our handhelds (brit gas), then people get a very cheap bill. The fault is both with the meter reading company and the supplier, a joint mess up.however I cant believe that the occupier has nt noticed how reasonable their bills seem and twigged but is happy to go along with it .Many have mentioned it to me on my rounds,one man said Brit Gas tried to lower his direct debit to £17 from £45 despite his calls to Brit Gas.From past experiance with Brit Gas you will be able to get the majority of the bill scrubbed if you push it.Its their error after all. Not sure how Npower operate with this sort of thing as they seem a very tough company, very quick to apply for warrants to fit prepays

backfoot

Premier wrote: »

Unless you have previously advised the supplier of the error (and they failed to act) then you will have to pay for what you consumed.

After all the meter is in your property, not the suppliers,

Have you really not checked your meters and the billing info for 4 years?

The situation is specifically covered as an example on page 6.

The backbilling rules apply.

Ask them to reissue the bill under these provisions. Could be a saving of £450+.

No obligation on the customer to check the meters. In any event,firm readings were obtained and used by the Supplier and its agents.

Terrylw1

OP, as I've posted on the other thread, suppliers in my opinion are flouting their obligations under the billing code by "trying it on" with all customers o see who will pat and who is too clued up to fall for it. This has been happening with payouts for missed visits under Ofgems code for years by not mentioning what a customer was entitled to unless they pushed for compensation.

So, don't accept this...raise a complaint and watch them change their minds.

Unless they can prove that you have deliberately prevented access to resolve the situation, you are covered and they know this.

I've seen this exact situation before and I've also seen all members of staff and managers not wanting to do it...but it only occurred due to the most senior manager deciding they would try it on, but they were advised they were breaking the billing code.

A few tips to make them back down...

- ask how many readers they have taken.
- ask why on these readings, they never acted.
- ask how many internal billing rejections have been created to their operators.
- ask what they did with them and why (its relevant because it points out the lazy staff, process failure, poor management controls and cheapo actions where they don't want to pay for engineers to go out. A poster above mentioned incorrect E7 billing, which would just be resolved at worst by paying to send out an engineer to check but they were obviously avoiding doing this...its likely this has occurred to you, but you never knew about it)

Check your meter as well, some meters are supposed to be transposed and they usually have a label on saying R1 = X, R2 = X.

Due to suppliers changing contracts away from the regionally experienced meter readers, this is becoming more common as new companies dont understand how they get naturally transposed.

Its common on Ampy models.

undaunted

Are you absolutely sure that they are correct now and were not previously?

Dont just take their word for it as you may be interested in this similar claim against a customer they were found to have harrassed when they took the matter to court.

http://www.which.co.uk/news/2010/09/customer-to-get-3000-damages-from-npower-230343/