Add your feedback on energy supplier Npower

naedanger

deke777 wrote: »

What a fantastic birthday present I received on my door step last week; it was so magical when I opened up the package to discover this splendid luxury wine & cheese hamper sent by my energy suppler npower
A few months ago I had an issue with the meter at my property running ‘fast’: I contacted npower and was assigned a mentor in Julie Alderson, who worked tirelessly on my behalf .initially sending an engineer to test the meter and waiving the usual £60.00 fee. The results of the test were inconclusive, so Julie organized the fitting of a new meter and paid me £20.00 to purchase a monitor to check on the readings
After a week, it proved to be that the original meter was faulty and Julie who had kept in regular touch by phone, email and letter; calculated my overpayment for the previous year; she even gave me a handsome inconvenience payment as well, over £214.00
I am off to Northern Cyprus in December, and this bonus will be a great help and fillip to send me on my way, it goes to prove that there is still some love left in this World after all:j

Lucky you!

My experience has been the complete opposite.

I have been trying to switch to npower since October. They have moved my gas but not my electricity. Instead they are billing me for someone else's electricity. They know they made this mistake but are refusing to fix it in a timely manner. I took my complaint to the Energy Ombudsman who found in my favour and gave npower a deadline for resolving the matter.

Instead of fixing the problem npower have closed my complaint having completely missed the Ombudsman deadline. However npower believe they can close the complaint not because they have fixed it, but because they have said they will fix it at some unspecified time.

Meantime I am getting all sorts of billing problems.

billp_2

I switched from N Power some months back and expected to receive a cheque for the credit balance that they held for me. It didn't arrive and after three months of waiting I rang to be told that the reason that they had not sent the refund was due to them not knowing my christian name. A real good baloney excuse - as I told the operator that I spoke to, as they had known my christian name from day one. A cheque for the over payments arrived two weeks later. Not a firm that I would return to.

nightswimming

I am planning on leaving Npower when my tariff ends in October as they have been nothing but trouble. By my calculations I will be over £100 in credit even if I stay until the very end of October and cancel my dd payment due on the 2nd of November.

As it seems Npower have trouble refunding people I thought I would reduce this credit amount by lowering my direct debit amount from £135 to £85 which would leave me at the end of October with a small credit balance that I wouldn't be too cross about waiting months to get back.

So I logged in to the website on the 2nd of August, selected my new payment amount and described in detail why I wanted this change.

Then I waited.

Today I received a reply. Apparently my payment amount can not be changed as I have not received a bill in the last 90 days! Despite me providing monthly meter readings I have not received a bill since April 14th, and my next is not due until November 5th.

"Rest assured, I have sent your details to our Billing team who will pick this up in the next 28 working days and thereafter, and you will receive an updated bill in 7 to 10 working days. This will include a reassessment of your account which may reduce your payments."

So it is going to take them 7 weeks to calculate a bill (and I'll believe it when I see it) after which they may reduce my payment amount. I guess I'll just have to chase that large refund after all. Great.

Don't touch them with a barge pole.

verntern

NPower is very disappointing administratively as a supposed major energy supplier.
I have not had the serious problems of others. I switched last year to their Online Fixed November 2014 deal. Mainly because I am a low user of energy and liked their lowish standing charges. Since then I have built up substantial credit via their DD and I have asked for this direct debit to be reduced. The mealy mouthed response was that 'it was important to retain the credit and DD for the winter period'. True. That is the idea of balancing out monthly payments. However, my credit and current monthly payments would far exceed my winter fuel bills. Irrelevant to Npower as I intend to switch before the end of the November. Ho, ho, I have submitted a complaint to them to either reduce my DD substantially or refund some of my credit. Not expecting much action! Customer service from NPower very poor. Look for alternative suppliers.

dazd1970

Absolute waste of space. Having eventually switched they tried to tell me that I needed to pay them £63 per month for electric only. In a one bed flat with gas central heating.

Emailed them and cancelled the direct debit, saying that i would set up a DD for the amount I knew I would use (I micro manage with my own spreadsheet, so far I have had my usage correct to the penny). They acknowledged that I use an average of just over £23 per month, and in the next sentence tell me i have to pay £55 per month.

They have no tolerance to adapt, and they impart a stealth tax so that they can use our money to invest for their profits, It is a scam that is long since in need of putting a stop to.

Now they have reimbursed what I have paid over the last 8 months, just as they want a meter reading. I know that what they will do now is bill me for the full period at a standard rate and not with the so called discounts for being on DD. This is their fault that I am not on DD and yet they are making me pay for their incompetence.

If I can influence only one person to drop NPower then I will be happy. I am currently designing a spreadsheet to have accessible to over 200 friends on Facebook, with a hope that they will share as well, and I will make a massive attempt at losing them customers.

To say I am more than a bit annoyed (cannot swear but it ends in 'off') is a slight under estimate.

nightswimming

Glad to see NPower are focusing on the really important things, like giving their website a makeover. Who needs accurate bills or good customer service if you have a nice modern site to look at!

When you log in the large green figure in the centre of the page is the ever-so-useful "You've paid £xxx since your last bill", which is literally the total of your payments since they last managed to produce a bill, in my case five months ago. Who on earth decided that is the number customers really need to see, instead of the current balance?

scobby17_2

After 2 years I have finally sorted my dispute with Npower, they are without doubt the worst company I have ever dealt with.

They customer services have no idea what they are talking about, the billing system is a nightmare.

I asked for a statement of my account and received 28 bills all for the same date, all with different meter readings and all with different amounts owing. None of them were correct despite me giving them monthly meter reading.

Please if you value your sanity do not use this company.

boredofbeingathome

Absolute rubbish. So far it took them 6 months to take a direct debit ( when first opened) Didn't give me my anniversary bonus! Refuse to answer questions and then because i queried it put a block on the account( so another 6 months of not taking direct debits) We couldn't figure out why until one of the advisers really did look into the account.

Rang up and sent emails numerous times, thought we had it sorted and in the space of a week had three differing direct debit amounts. Was assured that someone was personally looking after my account and would ring me...surprise, surprise no one rang me. Have received several generic apologies and a letter, but still no direct debit taken. We do pay them though.

Oh and because we ring up about the direct debits not being taken they have changed tariffs twice, because they no longer do the original one.
We are waiting for the final bill then going elsewhere.

I was hanging on for my anniversary bonus, as i dispute the amount owed them from not taking DD, constant tariff changing etc etc. I have lost the will to fight it out.

Flakey

Was with NPower for around 9 months - I wanted quarterly bills so that I could pay for what I used as I used it and didn't want them increasing DD's when they felt like it. After numerous problems with bills being produced at random intervals, estimating bills despite me providing readings etc etc i decided to switch.
Neither my new supplier or NPower requested final readings despite me ringing them a few days before the switch (they said the would contact me).
I then received a letter from NPower apologising for not sending a correct final bill and saying that 'any outstanding balance relating to final billing will be written off'. I then cancelled my DD.
on checking my account online there is an outstanding balance of £300 so I rang to check what was going on - I was told that the letter was sent in error and I was liable for the outstanding amount.
Now it appears that the two companies have different final and starting readings meaning that if I pay NPower and the new provider I will effectively be paying for the same gas twice!
Hard to believe it can be so difficult - life was much simpler when there was no choice of supplier.

Flakey

Does anyone have experience of a company who know what they are doing? I can't bear to waste any more of my time on hold trying to sort out billing problems.