Npower customer service

Conker25

Leigh, if only there were 1000 versions of you Npower would be great haha

Krackerjack

npower eh? So, I was a ScottishPower customer for around 30 years, well, I was also employed by them and took the view that being a customer as well was helping support my employment and NO, employees do not and never have got discounted energy, I wish.

After a bad experience with them as employers and them shuffling me out the door on serious ill health retirement, yes I do have serious heath issues but I was doing a sterling job for them and they knew it but a new management came in and ignored many factors and out I went.

That is the background, I almost immediately moved to the best deal I could get which happened to be npower, a good fixed rate ec, in brief it hit all the buzzers and bells so I signed up. We had a little glitch with them last year re the amount they reviewed my Direct debit to be but after I topped the account up, we agreed to keep the D/D at the same cost. I should add that to keep on top of things I submit meter readings monthly, it's not hard to do so why not? Move on twelve months, my D/D went up from £117/mth to ££283/mth!! Now I know that npower apparently do an estimation of bills and D/D payments twice a year but, I received no notificatio of their intent, I just happened to notice this hike in the D/D when I was putting meter readings in. Rther than have our D/D go through the roof like that with the possibility of having issues re-couping monies back come the spring I elected to add cash to the account to take it well into credit for the winter period, (knowing that we are also replacing our 14 year old boiler with a new condensing unit later this month) and raising the D/D up to £125, easy peasy you may think.

Nah, talk about making things hard for their customers, well, all of the above took place some 4-6 weeks ago, yesterday I received an e mail from npower telling me that they would be changing my D/D to £125 as of the 13th of November, taking a payment on that date and that the date for my D/D would be the 1st of the month! What!! Confused, you bet I was, a quick check of my bank account showed they had not taken the November D/D on the 1st of the month as usual, so, I din't know if they intend to take a payment on 13th November and then again on the 1st of December or whether they have now elected to take the D/D on the 13th, despite the somewhat ambiguous e mail stating payment to be taken on the 13th and D/D/ due on the 1st of the month.

As I see it because of their ineptitude they allowed my account to slide, albeit by two weeks towards a debit situation because they could not update their records to the new £125 D/D as per my request. Yet they seem perfectly capable of changing the value of the D/D by a factor of nearly three with no actual notice being given.

I'm supposedly in a price locked contract until next year but honestly, will be looking around to see if anything is competitive enough to lure me away from this bunch of chancers. 3 x complaints via their online forms solicited one reply.

Another rocket went their way today via their online forms, despite their whole system supposedly being down. I have requested a reply within three working days, reasonable enough I thought, I will now sit and twiddle my thumbs, probably with the heating turned down a notch.

spaceboy

I notice the npower company rep is quite selective in who she offers to help out here...

Krackerjack

spaceboy wrote: »

I notice the npower company rep is quite selective in who she offers to help out here...

I'm not sure what you are alluding to, instead of making short ambiguous sound bites can you please expand on what you are attempting to say. Or, with respect, if you have something on your mind, spit it out.

At least one person is being helped, better than it was on the 6th of the month, is that not a good thing?

cynicalgit_2

Yes the Pantomime Season is upon us and NPOWER once again are providing plenty of entertainment.
Oh yes they are.
I think it's a conspiracy to offer such poor service that people can't be bothered to switch supplier.

MillicentBystander

spaceboy wrote: »

You have to wonder what the hell the ombudsman does for its money. They dont seem to be clamping down of this sort of poor service from Npower.

I think this article explains it all.

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2010/oct/09/npower-consumers-ofgem

cynicalgit_2

Isn't NPower and customer service an oxymoron?

snoman

Krackerjack wrote: »

Yet they seem perfectly capable of changing the value of the D/D by a factor of nearly three with no actual notice being given.

Surely this contravenes the bank's DD guarantee policy?

joncombe

snoman wrote: »

Surely this contravenes the bank's DD guarantee policy?

Yes. In my experience Npower have no regard for that either

mpn226

Am I lone voice out there? been with npower over a year for electricity and FiT payments, 1 or 2 minor problems VERY quickly resolved on telephone, have just signed up for fixed price until 2015 at £20 per month.