Warning: Npower won't accept building society current account

heth

- but it'll cost you to find out!:mad:

Npower have apparently made a "business" decision not to deal with building societies so if your current account is with a building society rather than a bank you can't pay by direct debit, and hence will be charged more.

They don't publicise this. I attempted to switch & got a letter saying problem with account details entered online, please fill in form & return in freepost envelope enclosed - except it wasn't & customer services number supplied as alternative was 5p a min from landline. Letter said if don't reply in 10 days will be set up at standard rate without dd discount so rang anyway, on mobile as was working. Their ringback facility didn't work so was hanging on at heaven knows what cost for 20 mins. It then took some time for the operator to establish why my account wasn't acceptable - she at first tried to persuade me to go ahead and get the account changed later.

I pay everything else on direct debit through this account, and so many people have accounts with building societies now I can't understand why they are doing this. Needless to say I cancelled the switch.

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

Is your account with a major Building Society like Nationwide or Britannia?

Perhaps it is worth notifying your Building Society.

There are plenty of alternative numbers for NPower see:

http://www.saynoto0870.co.uk/companysearch.php

This one for example 01668 682423

rogro

Hi
I'm in the same position.
I'm with Cahoot which is a devision of Abbey National.
I still have a "sleeping" Nat West account and set up the DD with that and will transfer a monthly amount from my Cahoot account.

Cardew

rogro wrote: »

Hi
I'm in the same position.
I'm with Cahoot which is a devision of Abbey National.
I still have a "sleeping" Nat West account and set up the DD with that and will transfer a monthly amount from my Cahoot account.

Cahoot is not a Building Society - it is the on-line branch of Abbey National which also became a bank 20 years ago.

notbritishgas

rogro
I am with npower (for 18 months) and also bank with Cahoot. My DD was accepted OK by npower.

nick74

rogro wrote: »

Hi
I'm in the same position.
I'm with Cahoot which is a devision of Abbey National.
I still have a "sleeping" Nat West account and set up the DD with that and will transfer a monthly amount from my Cahoot account.

Why on earth don't you just change energy suppliers? I certainly wouldn't keep a separate bank account open just for npower's benefit!

PBA

Where on earth are you getting your information from? They wouldn't have to "deal" with building societies, or any bank other than their own. Their bank requests the payment and then it gets received through the standard clearing system.

What may be causing the issue is if they haven't got the latest list of sort codes installed on their system. If your account has a relatively new sort code it might be coming up as invalid. You'd need to report this to your bank, who would be able to give npower a nudge to update their systems. Alternatively the operator might have just been miskeying the account no and sort code.

olly300

It's nothing to do with the building society. It's to do with NPowers billing system.

I had this problem with another company and the issue was that whoever programmed their billing application did it so that new branches from building societies or building societies that had become banks in the last 15 years couldn't be entered in the application i.e. they couldn't enter the branch sort codes.

My solution to the problem was to shop elsewhere.

Cardew

PBA wrote: »

Where on earth are you getting your information from?

If you read the first post the OP made it quite clear that the information was got from the NPower call centre; and they were quite specific about the reason - 'business decision'

The third post got the same information.

I accept that the information given out was wrong(not unusual for these call centres) but someone not familiar with banking can be excused for believing what they are told!!!

Terrylw1

Npower has always accepted building societies to my knowledge but they have just finished transferring their customers into 1 or their 3 electricity database systems and it's lacking quite a few things that the older other 2 had...so it's probably a matter of "we don't want to spend any money upgrading".

MarkyMarkD

This explanation from npower frankly makes no sense. Either a billing system has an up-to-date sort code listing or it doesn't. Whether the sort code belongs to a bank, a building society, or a cabbage patch doll is irrelevant.