Npower DD Issues!!!!

chocolatelover93

NPower are really starting to pee me off now!! I have a tiny little house with only 4 storeage heaters of which 3 were on in the winter and one was on a timer so only come on for a few hours in the morning and a few in the evening. We have a heater in the bathroom that broke and the kitchen light broke so we've not been using them this winter. We started to use a hallogen heater to heat up the lounge and I was told these were good heaters to use, even NPower told me they were good to use. The only two things we have on Standby are the TV and the Sky Box, there is a light on our home phone an we have an alarm clock upstairs again with a light on. Our microwave doesn't have a display and as we both work we're hardly ever at home.
So anyway back to the dreaded bill!! We pay DD every month for our electric, when we moved into the house in Dec 2013 we were told our DD would be £64 a month so we paid that. In the March they didn't take a payment then we recieved a letter saying that basically it was our fault and we owed them the money (we had not cancelled the DD) so I phoned them and spent ages on the phone and they told me that it was there fault and was a system fault so took a one off payment of £64 and set up the DD again. The next month we were sent a payment card! I thought nothing of it becaue the DD had be set up again then a few months later we got another bill saying we owed them money and it needed paying by a certain date, so another phone call to NPower and they told us we were about 3 months behind on paymnets!! Their fault not ours!! So they set the DD up AGAIN. And this time I went into the bank to see if it was set up, it wasn't, so again more phone calls, anyway after months of back and forth they FINALLY set up the DD! Then we recieved a bill via email saying our DD was going up to over £100 a month because we owed them £486!! So Another phone call, I told them that it was illegal to change my DD without telling me within a certain amount of days, they agreed with this and appologised and put me back onto paper billing at my request. I asked for transcripts of all the calls and never recieved them. They offered me £20 off what I owed them, to which I told them no way!! In the end after hours on the phone, and I mean HOURS they agreed that it was their fault and dropped down what we owed them to £400 and we agreed to pay £20 extra a month. Which would be £64 for our electric which I was told was about how much we used a month. And £20 to pay off the amount owed to them. So we had been doing this. Then in March we got another bill telling us that our DD would now be £156!! as our tarrif come to an end and apparently we now owed them over £600!! So again 3 HOURS of my time wasted on the phone to them, I changed my tarriff to the cheapest one for me. They told me apparently I now use £94 a month of electric, which seems odd considering I used £64 last year!! I understand we've just been through winter and after ALOT of negotiation with them I got the bill down to £106 a month, which I'm not happy with but I just couldn't stand to be on the phone any longer.
So Saturday I got a letter through saying our tarriff had been changed but our monthly payments are £138 a month!! Well I never agreed to that!! I am so frustrated and I don't know what to do!!
Has anyone else had the same trouble or does anyone know what I should do?! Please help me, I am at my wits end!!

JJ_Egan

You have meter readings or are you just guessing at usage .

macman

As above, nothing in your long post tells us anything about your actual usage. £££'s tell us nothing. Post your annual kWh usage on each register (night rate and day rate), from your annual statement. It's assumed you are on E7 since you have NSH's?
The thing that jumps out is: why are you using a halogen heater if you are on E7? E7 gives you 7 hours overnight of cheap rate electricity, and is designed for properties with NSH's and an immersion heater. The downside is that all your other hours are at a premium rate, so you are paying about 400% more to run the halogen heater in the daytime and evening compared to the NSH's. Why use this instead of the barely used NSH?
NSH's do not 'come on' in the morning or evening, they charge up overnight and discharge heat throughout the day, so are you sure these are actually NSH's?
Forget your lights and microwave, what matters is heating and hot water, since that is what uses up to 80% of your energy-you don't say how your hot water is heated, but presumably an immersion heater?
How tiny is your 'tiny home' and how well insulated? 4 storage heaters if properly operated should be enough for a small house.
PS: your DD of £106 a month is not a 'bill', it's just a contribution towards your arrears and ongoing usage. £64 for an all electric property was far too low-the average would be nearly twice that.

MABLE

Don't people use paragraphs anymore. So difficult to read the OP message.

Nada666

It was their fault they were messing up taking the direct debit payments. Quickly you knew this was happening but did not monitor your bank account to check the instalments were leaving. Or you did but thought that that was their problem. No its not. They may give you a notional £20 here or there but that is not going to affect your balance.

As a matter of course (regardless of npower's billing competency) you would have been reading your meters and checking how much you were using. You would have an idea of this total.

As soon as you learned of the hiccoughs in the banking you would keep tracks on it and know when instalments missed. You know that that has a big effect on future payments once sorted - it is up to you to put that money aside to avoid a large increase to your monthly instalments.

Assuming it was their fault and the debits were not bounced then you are entitled that they charge you cost of the direct debit tariff. But any other variance in your eventual monthly instalment is ultimately your liability.

macman

Usual pattern I fear-'desperate' plea for help, incomplete info, request for proper usage figures...then we hear nothing more...

chocolatelover93

macman wrote: »

Usual pattern I fear-'desperate' plea for help, incomplete info, request for proper usage figures...then we hear nothing more...

The reason I haven't posted anything else yet is because I have been busy, I work and cannot be in the internet 24/7. I will post figures when I GET A CHANCE!!

Yes I do send in my meter readings and I was just asking for a bit of help and seeing if anyone else had the same issue. I didn't post on here for people to be mean to me. I am 21 this is the first time I have moved out of my own home so yes I may be a bit naive and need help so sorry about that!

My storage heater in my bedroom is not a traditional one and is one that can be put on a timer to come on when I want. We only used the halogen heater for a small amount of time each day and it was in the evening. We only use 3/4 of the heaters as one is in the spare room which is only used for laundry so we do not need the heating on.

Next time I have an issue I think I will think twice before posting on here because most of you have been so rude!

Oh and I've used paragraphs this time, hope you can read it properly!!

molerat

My storage heater in my bedroom is not a traditional one and is one that can be put on a timer to come on when I want.

Unlikely it is a storage heater, probably a panel heater with timer. Do you actually have any storage heaters - ones that charge overnight ?

You need to post up your day and night kWh readings for a whole year and unit rates and standing charges.

chocolatelover93

molerat wrote: »

Unlikely it is a storage heater, probably a panel heater with timer. Do you actually have any storage heaters - ones that charge overnight ?

You need to post up your day and night kWh readings for a whole year and unit rates and standing charges.

I was told it was a storage heater but is probably a pannel heater then. Yes I do have storage heaters, the other ones are.

I'm currently not at home so I cannot get acess to my bills at the moment but as I said when I get a chance I will post on everything, I just want to know what could be using so much electric and why I have been messed around by them.

The people saying I didn't check my bank account I did and I did state this in my post.

Thanks
Chocolatelover93

macman

If it comes on 'when you want' on a timer then it's not an NSH-and you are running it on peak rate.
And if you run the halogen heater 'in the evenings' then that is also running on peak rate, as the E7 hours are typically 7 hours between midnight and 8am.
You still haven't told us if you are definitely on an E7 tariff, but if you are, then using these heaters will be very expensive.
No one is being 'mean' to you, but your first post gives us no actual information which enables us to help you; namely, your actual consumption figures and metering/tariff type.
You refer to 'using so much electric', but we don't know how much you are using until you post figures. Your increasing DD may be due to your account being in debit due to your DD being too low for your consumption,or it may be due to you using too much power on peak rate-I suspect the latter from what you've told us. You need to be using typically 30% on cheap rate to make E7 worthwhile.

chocolatelover93

macman wrote: »

If it comes on 'when you want' on a timer then it's not an NSH-and you are running it on peak rate.
And if you run the halogen heater 'in the evenings' then that is also running on peak rate, as the E7 hours are typically 7 hours between midnight and 8am.
You still haven't told us if you are definitely on an E7 tariff, but if you are, then using these heaters will be very expensive.
No one is being 'mean' to you, but your first post gives us no actual information which enables us to help you\; namely, your actual consumption figures and metering/tariff type.

As previously stated it must be another heater, but the other heaters ARE storage heaters, I know how they work, my parents have them in their house, I only have the one on at the moment but over the winter had two on.

Yes, I was on Economy 7, I've now changed to a cheaper tarriff as the first one has run out.

I didn't put any fiures in because I didn't know I needed to, I wanted to know what to do yes, but I also wanted to know if anyone else has had or is having the same issues from NPower, I will see if I can log onto my online account and see if I can get figures etc from there.