Npower 'blocked bill' for old address

Confunded

Hello, I hope someone can help me with this!

I moved house a few months ago, and cancelled my old gas and electricity joint account with Npower, gave them the final readings, and was told to wait for a final bill. I knew my account was quite a lot in credit (the boiler at my old place was terrible and I had problems sorting out the correct direct debit amount for the gas bill). But no bill came, so I've phoned them several times and each time they said there was a block on my account so I should just wait for the final bill, but I could expect a sizeable refund.

So I waited until today, still no bill, and phoned again. They're now telling me that there's a computer error, the huge credit on my account doesn't exist, they can't send me any paperwork because of the computer error but they've worked out my bill by hand and say I'm actually only 50 pounds in credit. They wanted me to just accept the 50 pounds, but how can I do that if they haven't sent me the final bill so I can check the amounts?!

I asked to make an official complaint, because they just weren't offering me any alternatives. One of their managers is phoning me 'at some point in the next three days' - does anyone have any advice about what I can say, and what my rights are? I have bills stating that I'm in credit on the account, but if they just say those bills are an error, what can I do?

Thanks very much for any advice!

Terrylw1

You should make an official complaint, which you can do via their site. I'm always wary of call centre team managers calling back as they are not necessarily complaints people.

They may have passed it to the complaints dept but if so you should be getting a confirmation somehow.

After 8 weeks, you can refer it from a complaint to the ombudsman.

Its difficult to say as you need to provide more info about the previous bills & credit.

Things to consider are:

- are your bills estimates and your final reading provides a massive catch up bill?

- are they shifting your opening readings to make them lower?

- have they not billed you for sometime, hence another catch up issue?

- is the credit false due to more than just your payments e.g. credit adjustments in error, payments showing twice, etc?

- has someone else's payments hit your account?

- was a credit transferred to your account when it was opened from another account that wasn't yours?

- do the bills actually match the payments made on them in terms of closing, carried forward, etc?

- have any amended bills been done manually hence an operator has created a big credit or added your payments on again, etc?

Its difficult to say but if it were my issue, I would get each bill and follow them through to see if each balance carries forward, whether my payments are there, etc.

You could work out your own closing bill as well. There is always the chance they have used the wrong gas conversion rate and wiped your credit out in error but this sounds unlikely if they can't bill it.

Billing blocks are just markers that stop further billing, with you leaving you only want a final one anyway.

Don't believe any babble about computers not working...that's the most common excuse. Whilst they can't generate a bill until they resolve any problem, you shouldn't be expected to pay until they resolve it and send your a correct final bill, they can easily get anything out that's already there.

Confunded

Thanks, that's really helpful. I'll dig out the previous bills and try to follow it through.

I think what they're saying is that the credit on the account was building up because the computer error was just not deducting the required payments from the credit on the account - I need to look through and see if that's right (seems unlikely, I'm sure I'd have spotted that on previous bills, but maybe I didn't look closely enough). They were a mixture of estimated and actual readings so I'll check those too.

I did speak to a call centre manager today and told them I wasn't satisfied and wanted to make it an official complaint, so I'll check that that is what's happening when they phone me - if not, I'll follow it up through the website complaints system.

Terrylw1

Its unlikely that the bills aren't deducting from your payments because they are linked into the same processes. It would be easy to see this though as your carried forward balances would be the sum of your total payments plus the carried forward credit.

Never seen that one before, but you never know so wise to eliminate it.

Its not easy to say, hence having to add a load of possibilities, but the most obvious culprit would be under billing. Since you've got actuals, if they were billed, you should be up to date.

You could check for weird discounts or even incorrect kwh rates.

It could even be that your kwh is set to zero hence its just deducting standing charge. That's a weird one but seen it before.

If carried forward figures don't appear on the next bill, there is either a problem or it could indicate there are bills you can't see or amended bills could exist.

Definitely, get anything they say fully broken down and in writing so you can scrutinise it.

nPower

Hi Confunded,

This sounds very frustrating for you and I'd like to see if we can get this all sorted as soon as possible.

Could you send me your details to [EMAIL="forumresponse@npower.com"]forumresponse@npower.com[/EMAIL] and I can speak to our Complaints team right away.

Many thanks,

Adam