Help N power huge debt!!

scrimpingmam

Ok this is complicated but if anyone can advise me on what I should do next I would be very grateful.


Last Dec (2012) we tried to switch from Npower to another provider. We received a letter from Npower stating we owed then £500. We have a DD set up with Npower that comes out of a separate account (as do all our bills) so enough funds go in each month to cover what is called for. However, they had not taken any money for 6 months! I now check the account every month but didn't back then since the dd had been in place for a long while. Being a very low income family we could not just pay this and so had to stay with Npower. They also increased our monthly dd saying our usage was increasing. We queried this and were told that they would leave the dd at the increased rate but review usage during the year and would inform us if it was not right. The next month I noticed they had called for the £500 in a full but then refunded it a few days later. We then received an apology letter from them for this. However, when I check our account the next month I found they had refunded it again a week later. Since we pay our bills from this account the £500 was gone and we didn't want to ask bank for overdraft to cover it as this costs. So, we paid the dd every month last year and I also paid off around £500 extra into the account to cover the £1000 we then owed.


A week before Christmas this year we got another apology letter with all of our bills in it. Basically telling us that the amount we had paid had only be covering our usage because our usage had been extraordinarily high! For example, yesterday we used 7kwh in total! Over Christmas we had 4 extra people staying with us and for the first time since March turned on the underfloor heating (its not been on since) and used 16kwh a day on average. However they are telling us that over the period between June and the start of Dec 2013 our usage was over 22kwh per day. This is physically not possible we have very little elec equipment not even a tv, tumble dryer etc. We were also away for family weddings for three weeks over this period.


I emailed a complaint, got no reply and so called them. Apparently their call center in India tried to call us three times on New Years Eve!! I was asked to call the complaints team so I did. Their take on it was we have to pay back the £1000 at £45 extra a month for 2 years (this is really going to stretch our budget) and that our new dd was going from £56 a month to £171 because they cant explain the usage themselves so we must have used it?


We have left it as, our dd has been cancelled, we will monitor what we are using and pay a bill in three months if it is right and seek further advise about the £1000, the non collection of DD, them not reviewing our usage nor sending a bill and where we stand.


Has anyone had similar problems and can advise us on who to contact and what to do? we are very worried and can not get out of this debt nor change supplier all because of their mistakes!


Thanks in advance a very worried mother.

Bluebirdman_of_Alcathays

A long winded post, forgive me if I've misunderstood anything but I'll try and give my take on it. It's hard to say exactly what's going on without seeing your bill in KWh's so there may be some supposition.

npower have clearly dropped a huge clanger here in c0cking up your payments. That said, the blame (for want of a better word) has to be apportioned equally. It takes a few minutes every month to check a bank account to see if everything is in order - if this had happened the problem could have been stopped at source.

Are things based on accurate and up to date meter readings? It is possible you were underpaying in the past anyway, and the debt is not only made up of npower not taking the money, but also previous underpayment. It is a good idea to submit meter reads every month, npower only have to read once every 2 years.

Go through the complaints process outlining your grievances, they may give you a one off payment to apologise (£50 max).

Paying back over the course of 2 years really is the best you're going to get I'm afraid. This is longer than the debt was accrued, which is the normal time frame to repay a debt. You haven't mentioned the size of property etc, but £56 a month is insanely low - most people are paying at least double that. Factor in the debt repayment and £171 is realistic.

I wouldn't advice cancelling the DD - paying by DD gives you a 6% discount. Why shoot yourself in the foot further? Also, npower may not accept you paying quarterly (credit is a privelege not a right), and may force pre payment meters.

The best you can hope for is to maybe ask npower to stretch out the debt repayment further - this could reduce the DD to £150 or so. But if everything is being worked out using accurate recent meter readings then you've used the energy and have to pay for it.

Good luck.

scrimpingmam

Just to make things more clear. We use solar energy have no electrical heating except underfloor heating in kitchen which has been off since March apart from a few days over Christmas. We have no major electrical equipment that rack up bills, no tv, so non of that extra bdigi box etc, no tumble dryer, no toaster, we don't even drink tea or coffee so only have a kettle for when people visit. The main power user is shower but its not faulty. Went to energy efficiency and they would expect us to be using 17kwh a day which ties in with what we thought, over winter. Last Jan to March we used 9 kwh per day with underfloor heating on and June to dec 23kwh per day with heating off?! Does not make sense to us nor Npower they cant work out why its that high and what is going on and it has cost us nearly £600. In the past the highest DD we have paid for electric is £37 a month that was until Npower. We reg check our suppliers for best deals and so have been with a few and know we were paying the right amount.


Yes understand we should have kept eye on the DD going out which is why we do now but didn't even occur to us that a company can just not stick to a dd that's been in place for so long. Nor that they would refund an amount twice or send us bills.

scrimpingmam

Oh and the £171 was for usage only they want an extra £45 a month for the debt repayment, over a weeks wage for me.

macman

Some basic info please. Is this debt electricity, gas or both? However I'm assuming that it's an all-electric house. If so, what tariff are you on (E7 or single rate), and how do you heat (other than the u/f heating) and hot water the house? Since up to 80% of your consumption will go on those two, there's no point in obsessing about toasters and kettles-they're not relevant. Focus on the big energy guzzlers.
You mention 'solar energy', Do you mean solar hot water or solar PV? Solar hot water does not heat your house, it just provides some free hot water under the right conditions, so won't greatly reduce your overall bills.
Even if you consider yourselves low users, £56 per month is (as stated above) completely unrealistic, and even more so for an all-electric house. That will buy you about 5,600kWH of electricity per year, which is not that much more than many larger houses with gas CH and DHW use. £171 per month is about 17,000kWh p.a, which for an all electric house is perfectly feasible, especialy if you have u/f heating. Post your actual annual kWh usage and better advice can be given.

scrimpingmam

We use solar panels and solid fuel to heat the house and water. We have underfloor heating in the kitchen which is a small area and is hardly used eg few days over Christmas, not at all since Next big user is the shower and oven we have monitored both and nothing seems wrong there our next heavy using items are a dishwasher, fridge freezer and washing machine. Today so far we have used 5KWh, dinner is already cooked, washig done so wont be using these items again today.

Npower themselves have stated that from previous years and current usage they would expect us to be using at most in winter 17kwh a day. I know thats low but our aim is to have a yearly average of 8kwh per day by the end of the year. So, why they have us as usig 23+ a day during the sumer when we obviously use a lot less is a bit of a costly mystery. If we can sort this out to a) prevent it happening again and b) if its not our fault get the extra we have paid taken off the debt as it was supposed to be that would be great.

Sorry dont have acurate yearly usage just this years with is what we are questioning since i cant access my bills for previous years online they are no longer on my ac!!!!.
Npower happy to leave it as a mystery! Starting to think we should just clear account and switch, give up trying to work it out

Bluebirdman_of_Alcathays

It isn't npower that have you down as using that - that's your meter. Meters are correct 99.9% of the time. If that's what it's saying, going to another supplier isn't going to help much.

npower say that in the past they have you down as using a low amount, was this based on actual meter readings? How often have you given them readings? It's important - if they've been estimating bills for the last few years then it doesn't matter what they think you use as it could be nonsense!

scrimpingmam

We have one estimated reading which doesnt effect anythng since they sent all the bills at once and the final reading was accurate. And so the final bill adjusted to the reading. Our current usage is based on accurate readings, our past usage with Npower and with two other companies over the past 5 years were all accurate readings so we know we only use a low amount of electric, our meter readings since the middle of december when we started taking them daily tally with the smart meters readings and with what we expect so we dont think its an issue with the meter. I dont think a meter can go wrong for a period and then right itself . When we took reading of our appliances for Npower, turning everything off then on one at a time to see what they use they could not see how they could add up to 23kwh and nothing seems to be drawing more power than it should. Someone did suggest today that our fridge freezer may be faulty and be struggling in the summer but fine in winter because the room is colder? Is that even possible? The spike in usage was huge roughly ten times higher in summer than winter really want to avoid that so going to get new fridge anyway just incase.
Def leaving Npower the fact they never took our DD and didnt even know about it until we tried to switch suppliers, we dont get our bills, the paying extra money into our account, all signs that we need to find a company with better customer support and services even if their tariffs re higher.

Strebor

I can only sympathise with you. They caused me such grief I switched. They are still causing me grief over a year later. I get no sense out of them nor an appreciation of what effect this can have when they keep getting it wrong.

Anyway, I was so fed up I set up an e-petition, please consider signing, it seems like the only way to at least try and do something about it.

Cheers
Steve

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/56280

macman

scrimpingmam wrote: »

We use solar panels and solid fuel to heat the house and water. We have underfloor heating in the kitchen which is a small area and is hardly used eg few days over Christmas, not at all since Next big user is the shower and oven we have monitored both and nothing seems wrong there our next heavy using items are a dishwasher, fridge freezer and washing machine. Today so far we have used 5KWh, dinner is already cooked, washig done so wont be using these items again today.

Npower themselves have stated that from previous years and current usage they would expect us to be using at most in winter 17kwh a day. I know thats low but our aim is to have a yearly average of 8kwh per day by the end of the year. So, why they have us as usig 23+ a day during the sumer when we obviously use a lot less is a bit of a costly mystery. If we can sort this out to a) prevent it happening again and b) if its not our fault get the extra we have paid taken off the debt as it was supposed to be that would be great.

Sorry dont have acurate yearly usage just this years with is what we are questioning since i cant access my bills for previous years online they are no longer on my ac!!!!.
Npower happy to leave it as a mystery! Starting to think we should just clear account and switch, give up trying to work it out

Immersion heater back-up left on 24/7?
Your annual kWh figures are available from your bill/annual statements, or simply by phoning your supplier. Without this figure first you'll never get a handle on your usage: it's key. 2,920kWh pa is very low even with non-electric heating and hot water.

timmmers

Who lives next door? It's getting more common to steal electricity these days. Unlikely but still possible.

I'd get a simple usage meter which can even be free from suppliers, and see what effect each appliance has on consumption, and also what happens with NOTHING running. The freebie section here on the forum oftn has them on offer, I got mine from BG even though I'm not a customer