N-Power

Scott333

Moved out of my old student house at the end of July 2014 and my housemate has just contacted me today to say we have a 1400 hundred pound N power bill to pay, that he has just received. We were told that the utility company's would write to us when we moved in (August 2013). We never received any communication from n-power, neither did we have anyone round for a meter reading. I think it's completely unacceptable to a hit a group of cash-strapped students with such a huge bill with no warning after we have moved out.
I'm just looking for some advice on how to proceed with this if anyone has any please

naedanger

Scott333 wrote: »

Moved out of my old student house at the end of July 2014 and my housemate has just contacted me today to say we have a 1400 hundred pound N power bill to pay, that he has just received. We were told that the utility company's would write to us when we moved in (August 2013). We never received any communication from n-power, neither did we have anyone round for a meter reading. I think it's completely unacceptable to a hit a group of cash-strapped students with such a huge bill with no warning after we have moved out.
I'm just looking for some advice on how to proceed with this if anyone has any please

Try and get them to allow you to pay back the amount owed over as long a period as possible.

Scott333

naedanger wrote: »

Try and get them to allow you to pay back the amount owed over as long a period as possible.

Yeah sounds good, I read about trying to arrange a payment plan. I was wondering if there is any grounds to get it reduced, I have readings from when we moved in and when we moved out. Also is there not grounds to get some of it wrote off as it is there fault it's not been paid? We were told they would get in touch with us, we didn't even know who our provider was. Our letting agent told us we would be contacted by the provider, the gas and water providers did.

naedanger

Scott333 wrote: »

Yeah sounds good, I read about trying to arrange a payment plan. I was wondering if there is any grounds to get it reduced, I have readings from when we moved in and when we moved out. Also is there not grounds to get some of it wrote off as it is there fault it's not been paid? We were told they would get in touch with us, we didn't even know who our provider was. Our letting agent told us we would be contacted by the provider, the gas and water providers did.

I don't think there any grounds for getting the amount reduced but there is no harm asking. If I was your supplier I would not be that sympathetic, since you will be no worse off financially (you are only being asked to pay what you would have paid already had you been billed from the outset), and I suspect as students you should have had (1) the ability to find out who your supplier was (when you were not contacted after a few months) and (2) the ability to manage your financial affairs when a supplier does not bill you correctly.

Of course I don't know the details of your case so if there are specific circumstances that you feel relevant you should refer to them when dealing with npower.

nightswimming

Check the bill carefully to see if it is correct. Make sure they have used accurate opening & closing meter readings and that the standing charge only covers the period of your tenancy agreement (may be different to the dates you actually lived there). If the bill is incorrect you should be able to get them to recalculate it. Sadly NPower are not very good at issuing correct bills so it may take a while for them to get it right. I'm afraid you will almost certainly have to pay the full amount you owe but hopefully they will agree to a payment plan.