N Power - What would you do?

Simon7685

carefullycautious wrote: »

Be careful what you wish for. If the meter is changed your mum may end up paying more.

I am another one intrigued how your mum keeps her bills so low. I live in a one bed bung and my dual fuel for a month can be over 100 pounds during winter period.

As you are keeping records of her usage why are you making your life so stressful. She is building up credit and can choose to use this instead of paying for a while.

How does she keep her bills so low?
She lives in a purpose built flat converted from what was originally a convent. The external wall is 2 feet thick, the internal wall at the opposite side opens into a communal passage that is heated. Ceilings all lowered from the convent days and fully insulated with 10" of lagging. Secondary double glazing on all 3 windows. She only has 2 storage heaters in her flat by choice, the others were removed by choice because it was too warm. If she does need to use a fire she uses a halogen heater but it is only ocassional use. She uses induction hobs for cooking and a combination oven/grill/microwave for everything else. Energy saving bulbs. She doesn't use the emersion heater at all, she has an energy efficient shower etc etc.

She is not frugal where energy use is concerned, if it needs to go on it does.

As far as making my stressful, it is simply a case of getting the issue sorted, or more appropriately getting N Power to do their job and bill her more than once in a 12 month period.

It is N Power that have created the situation by failing to bill and taking payments that were and continue to be unecessary. If the average annual bill is £340 a year and you receive a £40 DD discount plus the WHD, it does not take a genius to work out that the problem is in the payments when they are £30 a month.

Not forgetting that without my involvement my Mother would have been paying £43 a month since last January. As an elderly lady she would have gone along with what N Power told her to pay. She was unable to work out her own bills because;
a. She hasn't had one for 12 months
b. Her tariff is so complicated that she does not fully understand how to work them out.
So in fairness had I not become involved the situation would have been a lot worse than it currently is.

I hope that eases your curiosity.

Simon7685

I forgot to say that I do not believe that in changing supplier and moving to a standard E7 tariff, she would be paying any more than she is now. Although to be completely fair if she was with a company that operated properly in regards billing and assessing payments, she would not worry at paying a little more.

Simon7685

Thought I would just add an update on this case.

The complaint which has already been opened has been backed up with a full written one. Included are all my calculations relating to the account, so N Power can check my calculations should they want to.

I even included a payment reassessment for them and curiously this resulted in payments of £17.76 being required to cover use for the next 12 months. This is taking the WHD into account and also the existing credit balance that is going to be left after all outstanding charges up to 22 January.

The reason I said curiously is because yesterday a letter was received from N Power advising they had reassessed the account. The payments from 03 March would be reduced to £18 a month.

This made me wonder if maybe just maybe some progress had been made as this new payment amount was pretty much what I had calculated.

However as always where N Power are concerned they seem to not know what the hell they are doing. this morning another letter arrived detailing another reassessment and payment back to £30 a month.

So in exactly 7 days payments have gone from £30 up to £51 back to £30 down to £18 and now back to £30.

I have also heard back from the Ombudsman Service. Good news is they have said the 8 week clock started ticking from the time N Power were made aware of a problem. Not from when N Power opened the complaint, so as it is on record that I first logged a problem then that date is 03 December as stated to the Ombudsman Service.

With that in mind I have advised N Power that I am giving them 14 days from the written complaint to resolve it fully and issue a bill. I have also told them that the payment for 02 Feb will be made but if no bill is received within 14 days, then the account will only be paid on receipt of a quarterly bill. So the DD will be cancelled.

Do I expect a resolution? Not really if they cant produce a bill in 12 months, I can't see it happening in 2 weeks, so it will go to the Ombudsman Service. On the plus side we have the £290 refund in the bank. The remaining credit balance covers the outstanding charges with a small balance left over. No more payments will be made unless a bill is produced therefore the onus falls straight back to N Power. No bill no payments.

Of course in the meantime money will be kept aside as though payments were still being made.

scaredofdebt

Are you aware of the back-billing policy?

http://www.npower.com/idc/groups/wcms_content/@wcms/@busi/documents/digitalassets/consumer_focus_back_bill.pdf

Specifically:

Under the Code, from 1 July 2007, where the suppliers are at fault in not billing a domestic
customer, they will not send a bill which includes unbilled energy consumed more than 1 year
previous to the bill being issued.

So, you'd be in your rights to stop any payments at all if you've not been billed for energy consumed more than a year ago.

However, I have heard that some energy companies ignore this voluntary code of practise, even if they've signed up to it, as nPower has.

Consumerist

scaredofdebt wrote: »

. . . However, I have heard that some energy companies ignore this voluntary code of practise, even if they've signed up to it, as nPower has.

But the Ombudsman will enforce it.

Simon7685

scaredofdebt wrote: »

Are you aware of the back-billing policy?

http://www.npower.com/idc/groups/wcms_content/@wcms/@busi/documents/digitalassets/consumer_focus_back_bill.pdf

Specifically:



So, you'd be in your rights to stop any payments at all if you've not been billed for energy consumed more than a year ago.

However, I have heard that some energy companies ignore this voluntary code of practise, even if they've signed up to it, as nPower has.

Yes I am aware of it but thank you for the link, it will come in handy when I want to give them the full official wording as things move on.

Simon7685

I have been doing some more homework on this. There are 32 flats where my Mother lives (sheltered housing). From what I have been able to find out about 30 are on this tariff with this obselete meter. The others paid to have the meter chancges and switched suppliers at some point.

Apparently the housing association did a deal with N Power a number of years ago that all their properties would have N Power meters in. I haven't been able to find out the exact details but when these flats were built in 1999 nobody had a choice but to be supplied by N Power.

Anyway I was speaking to one tenant last night, they have always paid quarterly and have not had a bill since 03 January 2013. They did not know anything about back billing so I passed the info over to them about it, which they were most grateful for.

So it would seem at least 30 elderly tenants are affected by this billing issue in just this one place. I reckon none of them know about back billing, or at least not until I put something up on the notice board about it:D

I am not sure how many of these schemes the landlord has but it could be a hell of a lot of OAP's that are in this same position as my Mother. If the majority pay by DD (which I think is probably most peoples preferred choice), then N Power could be rubbing their hands at the amount of money they are overcharging all these people potentially.

scaredofdebt

If more people find out about the back-billing policy and nPower start losing money over it they might get their systems sorted out a bit quicker.

Hmm, I can feel a web site coming on

Simon7685

I just thought an update to this fiasco might be in order..........

There has still been no contact from N Power and no bill received.

Last week I contacted the executive complaints team in writing expressing my annoyance that nothing had been done and no update even provided. I said I was not satisfied and asked for the complaint to be escalated to the next point. i.e Them, the Executive Complaints team.

I received no response either by telephone / email or in writing.

At the weekend I wrote to Paul Massara, again heading the matter "Complaint" I gave all the information regarding the initial complaint and included all previous letters etc etc. I e mailed all this for quickness.

Yesterday I got an email from the Head of Customer Management. She thanked me for contacting the CEO and providing all the information. However they were not able to answer my questions or the concerns I raised.

Instead she has opened up a new complaint about the first complaint and one of their "Customer Relations Executives" will be contacting me in due course to answer my questions.

In other words sod all has still been done and my Mother is no closer to getting a bill now than she was in December.

So when I contact them at the end of this week about the initial complaint, I also need to persue the complaint about the complaint:rotfl:. It really is astounding just how inept this company is and how it just seems to think it can carry on operating in the manner it is with no redress.

I am advising them that I want a refund of the £370 that they are still holding. They have not and cannot produce a bill, therefore they have no right to hold the money. Technically my Mother owes them nothing until they can produce a bill, so I want the money back.

If they refuse, then having investigated the options available, I will be lodging papers with the County Court to recover the money.

They have now had 51 weeks since the last bill was issued. They were asked to produce a manual bill on 03 December 2013, that is 10 weeks and 1 day as of today.

On a positive note and thanks to the back billing process they will start to lose money from next week on a daily basis.

Consumerist

Simon7685 wrote: »

. . .Instead she has opened up a new complaint about the first complaint and one of their "Customer Relations Executives" will be contacting me in due course to answer my questions. . .

Hope she gave you a complaints reference number.

Edit
BTW "due course" for nPower is probably "never".