MSE News: Warning: Npower's slapping ex-customers with huge bills

gemgemnewton

After 2 years of not receiving one bill from Npower (I fell into the new billing system hell) I forced their hands by switching. Not long after that I had finally received a bill. I paid the full amount July 2014. Last month I had some try to do a meter reading and on the card they put through my box I wrote 'Not an Npower customer and never will be', I thought that would be the end of it... On 8th April 2015 I received a bill from Npower (baring in mind I left them in March 2014) of the amount £734.73. I called them and after spending 30 minutes on hold the person on the phone could not understand why I had this bill and sent it to complaints.

Today (16th April 2015) I got two cheques from Npower in the post amounting to nearly £150!!! WHAT?! So I called them again, twice. 3 people later they told me that I owe them £90?!?!?!?! I told them I am not willing to pay a penny towards this until I can see where this amount comes from because as far as I was aware I paid up every penny I owed them last year.

So now they are sending me a letter showing all movement on my account to show where this £90 has come from. I am far from happy with them, last year I spent months trying to fight against them with The Energy Ombudsman but got no where. And now, they are billing me for what? Fresh air???

Has anyone had the same? What did you do, do you have any advice? I refuse to pay this amount unless I genuinely owe it!!!

naedanger

gemgemnewton wrote: »

After 2 years of not receiving one bill from Npower (I fell into the new billing system hell) I forced their hands by switching. Not long after that I had finally received a bill. I paid the full amount July 2014. Last month I had some try to do a meter reading and on the card they put through my box I wrote 'Not an Npower customer and never will be', I thought that would be the end of it... On 8th April 2015 I received a bill from Npower (baring in mind I left them in March 2014) of the amount £734.73. I called them and after spending 30 minutes on hold the person on the phone could not understand why I had this bill and sent it to complaints.

Today (16th April 2015) I got two cheques from Npower in the post amounting to nearly £150!!! WHAT?! So I called them again, twice. 3 people later they told me that I owe them £90?!?!?!?! I told them I am not willing to pay a penny towards this until I can see where this amount comes from because as far as I was aware I paid up every penny I owed them last year.

So now they are sending me a letter showing all movement on my account to show where this £90 has come from. I am far from happy with them, last year I spent months trying to fight against them with The Energy Ombudsman but got no where. And now, they are billing me for what? Fresh air???

Has anyone had the same? What did you do, do you have any advice? I refuse to pay this amount unless I genuinely owe it!!!

Do you have a copy of the final bill i.e. covering the final meter reading and have you evidence (e.g. from a bank statement) that you paid this amount?

If so then I would dispute any further bill they send unless it clearly shows what was wrong with the previous final bill. In other words I would write a formal complaint explaining that they should stop any further bills unless they clearly say what was wrong with the previous final bill which was settled. If they continue I would escalate my complaint and take it to the Ombudsman after 8 weeks.

gemgemnewton

naedanger wrote: »

Do you have a copy of the final bill i.e. covering the final meter reading and have you evidence (e.g. from a bank statement) that you paid this amount?

If so then I would dispute any further bill they send unless it clearly shows what was wrong with the previous final bill. In other words I would write a formal complaint explaining that they should stop any further bills unless they clearly say what was wrong with the previous final bill which was settled. If they continue I would escalate my complaint and take it to the Ombudsman after 8 weeks.

Hi naedanger, thank you for your reply. I hope I kept them, I will hunt them down and get a complaint in. I am also going to request them never to contact me and take my info off the system!

davidgmmafan

Just thought I would comment on this

"Wow. How can the regulator let them away with only calculating bills approximately, which is bound to lead to a good proportion of affected customers being over-charged. Then they say "Npower said similar calculations have now been automated as part of its billing system". This is shocking. "

I agree entirely, Ofgem is asleep and the wheel and (one could argue) negligent. It took a long time for them to take any interested in this and the deadline to end the billing backlog leads to this sort of situation.

Ask yourself what would you expect a company consistently ranked as the absolute worst for customer service to do with a deadline to hit? They'd send out any old rubbish to hit it. Yet Ofgem somehow did not consider this possibility.

I don't know if their billing system is still in meltdown, recent posts would suggest it is, though their soothing radio ad campaign suggest otherwise...

gemgemnewton

After numerous letters, complaints, phone calls and a final letter in a bright orange envelope Npower have closed my account and wiped any money they claim I owe them, even the £90 odd. It took a while but I just repeated myself over and over explaining that this has come from no where, got my complaints pushed through as urgent and the only way they could see this being solved is to close everything and forget about the £90.

A YEAR AND HALF FIGHT WON!!!

Patrickuk

Hello,

(tl;dr: I left npower in Nov 2013, they now (May 2015) claim I owe them £320).

I moved from the property nPower provided electricity to in November 2013. Npower weren't capable of billing me even though I called them and wrote to them several times asking them to provide a bill based on actual readings and not ridiculous estimates, they failed to provide a bill. I provided them readings several times and they came to take readings on several occasions and always said that I would receive a bill, but I didn't.

A few months after moving, I decided to complain and demand a bill so I could pay and be rid of them, after a few months I received a letter stating,
"I am sorry that we have no far been unable to resolve your complaint. We are doing everything we can to resolve it as quickly as possible. This 'eight week' letter explains what the Ombudsman"
and they proceeded to tell me that I have the right to complain to the Ombudsman Services - Energy and that they will 'continue' to liaise with me until the issue is resolved.

I didn't hear anything from them until July 2014 when they sent a letter apologizing for their !!!!-up and the following:

"Good news on your final statement", they stated that, "We know it's time to put things right, so here's what we've decided to do. Any outstanding balance, specifically related to your final billing period with npower, has been written off. Please accept this letter as confirmation of that, there;'s now no need to send you a final statement".

I thought that it was decent of them to write it off as they hadn't billed me for well over a year and I had had enough waiting and begging them to send a bill... As far as I was concerned, that was the end of npower, forever.

Last week (May 2015), out of the blue, I received a letter from them with large bold text asking, "Is there anything we can do to help". Though tempting, I decided not to respond with the first dozen things that came to mind. The letter says that they recently sent me a final electricity bill showing the outstanding balance and payment date and that my current balance is £320.41. This letter did not include a bill at all, it doesn't say what period this was for or provide any usage details. I tried calling them but it was already after 8pm so they were closed. I forgot about it until today. When I arrived home from work I found another letter from them with large, bold text stating "Your outstanding final bill - please act quickly. We've written to you recently about your unpaid electricity bill and offered to help if you can't pay, but we haven't received your payment or heard from you ... We understand that your bill was delayed which may have caused you problems with paying, and so we have waited longer than normal before writing to you about your bill".

I decided to call them and ask for an explanation, whilst on the phone, I reset my password for the online account and logged in. I had plenty of time to do this as the npower representative put me on hold for about 30 minutes. On my account, there is a bill which states it is the Final bill of £576 dated the 25th February 2014, which covers everything up to the date the account was closed - the 2nd November 2013.

The npower representative explained that they had wiped off part of my bill and not all of it and that they have decided that I owe them £320. I asked what period this was for, why it had not been sent to me, why it was not visible on the online account and how they reached that figure. He said that "there are a few errors and glitches with the online account". I stated that I found a Final Bill (which had never been sent to me) for £576, on the online account) dated 25th Feb 2014 and that I also have a letter from them which specifically refers to the Final Bill that clearly states that it had been written off and that I don't owe them a thing.

He put me on hold again for a while then got back to me saying that their system is messed up, that it says that I owe them £320. He wasn't able to answer whether it was legal for them to attempt to bill me for usage which they had told me had been written off. He couldn't say whether they can bill people well over 12 months after the account had been closed or whether the back billing code of practice allowed them to do so. I advised that I will not be paying anything until I am sure that I actually owe this money and asked that he send me the bill which he said he had which had not been posted to me nor attached to the online account. I cannot help but wonder if this bill will also state 'Final bill' as the one currently on the account does. I find it terribly amusing how they now have two final bills when in the letter they sent me stating that everything has been written off, they clearly said that there is no need to send me a final statement.

I did my best to be nice to him and said that I understand that he is not avoiding answering questions because he is trying to be awkward and that I appreciate that has a job to do, but nevertheless I need an explanation of what was going on. He was a nice chap, despite his English being a little difficult to comprehend. He said that he would put a note on my account about our conversation and provided me the complaints team number and asked that I call them back tomorrow as they are available until 18:00.

Tomorrow, if I have time, I will call their complaints department and ask for explanations. This company is probably the worst I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with.

My questions are; Do I owe them anything? Can they bill me in May 2015 for alleged usage from Aug-Nov 2013? How about after them writing to me stating that I no longer owe them anything?

Thank you.
Patrick

MartinStroudUK

I have had terrible problems with NPower over the past couple of years. I had a balance in credit and wanted it paying back to my account. Reasonable enough you would think, I had been paying on Direct Debit etc...The annoying thing was they kept automatically changing the amount I pay each month for me to have to amend it periodically online again. Their estimations are chronic. I only use Electricity so when I was charged double my £55 DD I got rather annoyed and rang them. They said the only way to get the amount back was to go to my bank and ask for the claim back against my account and card...
That only stopped meant my overall Direct Debits stopped so started paying manually...


I then appeared not to get bills sent and it came to a head when I had a meter plus guy to read the meters and so I thought fine I can settle down now. I then checked my NPower account at the weekend and could not believe I was now £2660.42 in credit. I then checked my online bill and saw a strange number of "Bill Reversals", and one "Total Write Off due to late bill which was £997.85" I worked it out and I had a total of £2,738.18 in Bill Reversals and the £997.85 Total Write off. WIth the original credit I started with of 365.88 I now appear to be £2.6k in credit give or take a few quid....


I rang N Power and they were not too sure why, and I gave them my meter readings, advising them I had received a clutch of bills dating to Sep 2013, and these appear to have been pre-printed explaining that NPower was very sorry for the fact I had not been sent proper bills. So now I am waiting for an updated bill and the meter readings I gave in May look sound...


Very perplexing and it fills me with little confidence in NPower @MartiniVV

frodobobby

I closed my account 18 months ago and since then I received eight final bills (seven - hundreds of pounds in credit and one - payment request) from npower. All these bills are based on fictional estimates and don't take in account meter readings I provided. I spoke to their advisers (rude, horrible people) and sent several emails but my account is still open.

whiteswan

Left them last November - received a final bill today !

Joke of a company - but it gets better............

Tried to pay what they say I owe and told that I need to telephone somebody called Moorcroft and also a firm of solicitors.

I only got the letter today (and one last week) !!

NEVER EVER go near these clowns.

Dave

joncombe

whiteswan wrote: »

Left them last November - received a final bill today !

Joke of a company - but it gets better............

Tried to pay what they say I owe and told that I need to telephone somebody called Moorcroft and also a firm of solicitors.

I only got the letter today (and one last week) !!

NEVER EVER go near these clowns.

Dave

Moorcroft are a debt recovery / baliiff company, if you wern't aware already. Horrible company. I've unfortunately had dealings with them where they kept sending baliffs to my address, not because I owed money but because the person that lived at my address previously did, and they couldn't seem to accept that the property had changed hands and I didn't owe them money (and wasn't going to pay them any).