Npower Retrospective Bill for nearly 2 years ago

naedanger

UrbanDanceSquad wrote: »

Well, it took nearly 4 weeks for them to reply to the complaint which I emailed to them. Their reply can be summed up as "you owe XYZ amount because your readings were wrong, we've written off XYZ amount because we're such nice people. However, you still owe us 400 quid and you can either pay now or arrange instalments. If you don't pay up then we'll hand this over to a debt collector and/or may take you to court. Oh and apologies for the delay with our reply, we've opened another complaint on your behalf about how long it took us to reply." Once again, the amounts they quoted suggested I had run up a bill of something like £1400 on E7 electric in a crumby one bedroom flat and within a 5 month period?

So I replied back to them to let them know how I felt about the demand and the reply to my complaint. I was pretty much straight to the point and I also told them that I would welcome a date in court, if it came to that, in that I couldn't see a judge slap a CCJ on me for this nonsense.

I also decided to go to the ombudsmen because I had initially raised the issue with Npower back in April, so way past the 8 week period. However, they replied back that I needed to wait 8 weeks? To which I replied back with "please read my original email". That was last week.

Whilst this was all going on, I was receiving letters from Moorcroft and telemessage letters too.

Two days ago, I received an email from Npower thanking me for my reply and apologising for their "system". They have now written off the balance and I owe them nothing. Later that day, the ombudsmen called to advise they'd looked at my case again and were prepared to look into it further...LOL. So I told them that Npower had finally pulled their fingers out so no need for their help, but I thanked them for the offer and apologised for wasting their time.

I'll give it a month and then pull down my credit file to see if Npower have damaged it.

A big thanks to all those who replied and helped me on this thread.

Thanks for the update. And it is good to see npower have finally accepted their bill should not have been sent.

However it is a poor state of affairs that npower don't do the correct thing on their own accord.

notafan

npower are a joke.

They couldn't bill me correctly for nearlly two years but instead billed me £800 two weeks after refunding me £400 telling me i was in credit by that amount. (they kept writing moving the direct debit up and down). After they needed another 5 months to investigate they found out it was £600. I cleared this after they provided a breakdown and discounted the bill by £50 for their errors. I then tried to switch to another supplier.

This triggered a bill from them for £800 again and they blocked the switch. I raised with their exec office who found that it was a 'computer error' and the second final bill they issued was around £70 which was as expected. I paid this and received a 3rd final bill of £25 around 3 months later after changing supplier - this included energy paid for by the new supplier. I then raised it with the ombudsman. Days later they called begging to resolve it and they gave me £100 as a sorry if i let them mark the complaint as resolved. Fast forward 18 months later i received a 4th final bill and final demand for around £10.

I sent the bill to their exec office and basically told them to shove it and that I would require at least 18 months to investigate my side and the ombudsman might require some time too.

The replied sent me another cheque for £50 and advised it was another computer error and they wouldn't be pursuing me again.

Luckily i haven't heard from them again but i would never use them ever again - along with British Gas, Atlantic/SSE & EDF who in my experience are almost as incompetent as npower.