No bills from npower - now a massive one

megan1992

I am a student and last year I received no bills from npower, despite asking and giving numerous meter readings (we were due to pay quarterly after being sent a bill).

Now, 6 months after I closed the account, I have received a bill for the whole year. I originally thought fair enough, we are paying for the energy we used, and they have allowed us to pay it over 24 months if we want to.

However I then saw an article about a family in a very similar situation who got £300 ish off their bill as a 'gesture of goodwill'. I have since called npower to ask for a discount. The lady on the phone said no, and she said her manager said the same. The manager was too busy to talk to me so the lady said the complaints team will call me back as they have more power (unsurprisingly they were too busy at the time).

I have a feeling that they will say no, but I will continue to ask for each employee's manager. Does anyone have any advice on what I can say to get some money off the final bill? Surely if they can do it for one poor customer they can do it for another...

fed_up_and_stressed

Npower have a set policy relating to unbilled accounts they call it "late billed policy" this is a strict criteria as to whether you can have debt written off if they haven't billed you for over 12 months. This has set criteria and has no room for advisor discretion so asking for managers will not make any difference to this company wide policy.

Just speak to the complaints team and ask for your account to be looked into to see if you qualify. There are various things they can do to wiggle out of writing off the bill e.g. If payments have been made they may try and say late billed policy doesn't apply if you haven't been financilly disadvantaged etc

macman

Since you've had 18m interest free credit, what makes you think you are entitled to a £200 discount?

DaveTheMus

you used the power....pay for it.

if you carried out work for someone and didn't invoice them for 12 months, would it be fair if they then said they want £300 off?

I_have_spoken

Screw Npower for everything you can get

spiro

The Back Billing code states they can not back bill more than 12 months from the date of the bill. If NPower's bill covers a longer period than this direct them to the code and if they don't back down raise a formal complaint.

macman

Certainly the OP should invoke the billing code if applicable-but they mentioned a possible bill reduction 'on a goodwill basis'. OP has suffered no loss as a result (quite the contrary) so on what basis is compensation due?