Supposedly 'free' boiler upgrade from Npower

Light_blue

Reeling from yet another supposedly "free" boiler upgrade. They advertise to get you sucked in; make you go through loads of visits; everyone telling you you'll be eligible, UNTIL YOU GET TO THE FINAL HURDLE, "sorry, your boiler isn't IN-EFFICIENT enough". Yet its over 25 years old, the rest of the houses in the terrace (council owned are getting theirs upgraded); but as we bought our house off the council 3months ago we were taken off the upgrade schedule. So applied before the end of the tax year (April 2014) for the govt backed scheme via npower (as we met the eligibility criteria then; not sure that we would now...hence reluctant to re-apply with a different supplier). Had telephone screening, then site visit screening, then a technical assessor site visit - all saying we were eligible. Then no word from them for a month since the technical assessor visit. We've phoned half a dozen times to chase a date of installation up, only to be told today that we're not eligible for a FULL upgrade, and that we'd have to contribute £780 if we want to proceed. Anyone else had this said to them at the last stage? They say they will send a letter out explaining what we boiler we could get if we did this PART-funding. They refused to give figures over the phone RE: carbon emissions savings/relative in-efficiency (as I presume these are industry set standards that all energy companies/councils etc. follow before deciding whether a boiler is in-efficient enough to warrant replacing). Sounds 'fishy' tome, but husband fed up of waiting and thinks we should borrow money to "just get it done" as we might not get the opportunity to get it so cheap. I dunno....I just don't trust them...Has anyone else proceeded with part-payment after being sucked in with their rhetoric of "FREE" boiler upgrade?

chanz4

the money has to come from somewhere its not free, if you don't meet the rating for having it done that's end of that

DUTR

chanz4 wrote: »

the money has to come from somewhere its not free, if you don't meet the rating for having it done that's end of that

Also, the 25 year old boiler will more than likely see out more modern boilers, not ineeficient enough must be a good thing, from doing the maths on my own boiler, a new boiler may never pay for itself based on the lower consumption it may use vs the life expectancy of the replacement boiler.

Light_blue

The point is IT'S NOT BEEN PROVED WE DON'T MEET THE criteria for in-efficiency! All advice to date is that we do; and Npower are refusing to give us a breakdown of their latest calculations as to why they don't NOW deem it meeting the criteria. Believe me, we are in no rush to replace it if it's not needed....but our gas bills are hefty (much more than other households, with similar family sizes, down the row of terraces to ours who have recently had their boilers upgraded by the council; prior to upgrade, our gas bills were similar....that was the trigger for us investigating an upgrade). My point is the lack of transparency from Npower...has anyone else faced this? What did you do? Spoke to Energy Saving Trust, whose advice was that ours would be deemed in-efficient by age, make, and model. They confirmed there is an industry-wide standard for grading for relative inefficiency/ Co2 emissions & savings. Any feedback on dealing with Npower in particular, as regards boiler upgrades would be much appreciated. Thank you

teddysmum

Light_blue wrote: »

So applied before the end of the tax year (April 2014) for the govt backed scheme via npower (as we met the eligibility criteria then; not sure that we would now...

You say that you are unsure about meeting criteria now, so perhaps this was the reason for the refusal, but someone gave you an incorrect one (ie based on efficiency).

Light_blue

I'm referring to eligibility w.r.t. to 'person' specification (we were accepted based on our working tax credit situation), I wasn't referring to eligibility w.r.t. our 'boiler' specification (which obviously hasn't changed at all between tax years).


Because we started the application process in the last tax year, the 'person' specification is based on being eligible in the tax year preceding that. And we were definitely eligible then.