nPower direct debit discount query

Nada666

£98.63 is less than £105.

The £10 dual fuel discount has been abandoned (replaced by a 'permanent' reduction to the price of new gas standing charges.)

The yearly £95 direct debit discount is replaced by £42 +£53 discounts off the standing charges (applied every day.) Note that Ofgem will expect a supplier to quote the standing charge including this discount.

scaredofdebt

The discount used to be £40 for Electric on DD, £50 for Gas on DD and a further £10 for having both fuels, ie £100 annually.

Since 1st Dec 2013 they've changed this so you get a reduced Daily Standing Charge that equates to around the same level, the Gas Daily Standing Charge in theory is now £60 annually to cater for a dual fuel discount as few people have Gas only with one supplier. I say in theory as I am not convinced their figures add up.

One of their Electricity tariffs has a Daily Standing Charge of 10.9p a day and that's reduced to zero if you pay by DD so 10.9p x 365 days is £40 near enough. Not checked all their tariffs though!

Every customer of theirs should have had a "pro-rata" discount for the DD up until Dec 2013 and mine was credited on my last bill.

So for example if you got your discount in June 2013 you'd get roughly 5 months worth of DD discount, or £100/12 x 5.

The theory is it's fairer as you can leave at any time and still get the discount as you're getting it every day so you don't lose out if you change supplier.

2013yearofthehouse

Nada666 wrote: »

£98.63 is less than £105.

The £10 dual fuel discount has been abandoned (replaced by a 'permanent' reduction to the price of new gas standing charges.)

The yearly £95 direct debit discount is replaced by £42 +£53 discounts off the standing charges (applied every day.) Note that Ofgem will expect a supplier to quote the standing charge including this discount.

scaredofdebt wrote: »

The discount used to be £40 for Electric on DD, £50 for Gas on DD and a further £10 for having both fuels, ie £100 annually.

Since 1st Dec 2013 they've changed this so you get a reduced Daily Standing Charge that equates to around the same level, the Gas Daily Standing Charge in theory is now £60 annually to cater for a dual fuel discount as few people have Gas only with one supplier. I say in theory as I am not convinced their figures add up.

One of their Electricity tariffs has a Daily Standing Charge of 10.9p a day and that's reduced to zero if you pay by DD so 10.9p x 365 days is £40 near enough. Not checked all their tariffs though!

Every customer of theirs should have had a "pro-rata" discount for the DD up until Dec 2013 and mine was credited on my last bill.

So for example if you got your discount in June 2013 you'd get roughly 5 months worth of DD discount, or £100/12 x 5.

The theory is it's fairer as you can leave at any time and still get the discount as you're getting it every day so you don't lose out if you change supplier.

The £98.63 with VAT is £103.56 which while obviously less than £105, it isn't far off.

If the discount was only supposed to be applied up to 1st December 2013, then shouldn't I have got less than £103.56 for 11th Feb to 1st Dec? More like £83-ish?


EDIT: has just occured to me what they've done! They've given me the full 1 year discount for Electricity (11th Feb 2013 to 11th Feb 2014) of £40 (ignoring VAT here for a minute). However, just realised/remembered my gas started 10 days later so they've given me 355 days worth of £50 which is £48.63, by stopping the discount at 11th Feb instead of giving me the full years discount. Very odd.....

2013yearofthehouse

After my last 2 posts, I emailed npower to query the discount and received a reply today. They're not sure why I didn't receive the full discount, but have now credited my account with the difference (£1.37). They said that my standing charges would not be decreased and I would receive the full discount again next year as usual.

So what's going on? Does this new way of billing only apply to certain people or tariffs?

jbuchanangb

Although my last bill from nPower was in November and the next one is due in May, when I have logged on to look at the payment history I can see that three credits have been applied to my account, being the gas, electric, and dual fuel discounts from the last anniversary of the account to the date from which OFGEM's new way of applying the discounts came into effect.

Presumably the next bill when it arrives will have some way of recognising all that.