I have an NPower problem too!...

Terrylw1

Hi Paintpot,

They have been migrating their customer portfolio's into 1 from 3 residential systems for the last 2 years or so.

They have kept a minimum of 12 months billing data in the old system and archiving a view of this into a system that any advisor can see.

So, if you 3 weeks is over 12 months ago, maybe thats it. However, if your 3 weeks is over 12 months and they haven't billed it and it was between your tenants, they can't bill you anyway under the Ofgem billing rules.

Have your has tenants in after the 3 weeks which they have set up on their systems. If thats the case, I understand that it will be hard for them to bill you. They would need to produce a manual bill that is not accounted for on the system in the same way. To be honest, if the property was vacant it will be cheaper for them to wroite that off than go down that route.

Suggest you speak to manager.

P.S. it's business as usual at their end so thats just an excuse to get you off the phone when you may be asking something that the call centre don't know how to do.

If you are business and your site has been idle for a long time, there could be a problem there but I won't go into that unless you advise you are...

paintpot

Terrylw1 wrote: »

Hi Paintpot,

They have been migrating their customer portfolio's into 1 from 3 residential systems for the last 2 years or so.

They have kept a minimum of 12 months billing data in the old system and archiving a view of this into a system that any advisor can see.

So, if you 3 weeks is over 12 months ago, maybe thats it. However, if your 3 weeks is over 12 months and they haven't billed it and it was between your tenants, they can't bill you anyway under the Ofgem billing rules.

Have your has tenants in after the 3 weeks which they have set up on their systems. If thats the case, I understand that it will be hard for them to bill you. They would need to produce a manual bill that is not accounted for on the system in the same way. To be honest, if the property was vacant it will be cheaper for them to wroite that off than go down that route.

Suggest you speak to manager.

P.S. it's business as usual at their end so thats just an excuse to get you off the phone when you may be asking something that the call centre don't know how to do.

If you are business and your site has been idle for a long time, there could be a problem there but I won't go into that unless you advise you are...

Hi, my bill is for three weeks in July- August when the property was empty but was it's what I owe for when I was using power tidying the property to relet. I read the meter, old tenants submited their closing reading then new tenant submitted theirs and I gave my opening and closind readings. Gave them my correspodence adress for bills but they sent a letter addressed to me to the rental property regarding an "enquiry" I had raised (?) to the rental property with no account number on. New tenant gave it to me, I rang N pOwer and they had no idea why they wrote to me even when I gave them their ref number. Asked about where my bill was/could they update my correspondence address, told it was all in order and bill on its way, then welcome pack arrived addressed to me at rental house, no bill again, rang and told correspondence was correct on system , queried why correspondence sent to wrong address again, weeks later still no bills, rang up again, told about migrating systems, told new tenant hadn't given their opening reading so they couldn't close my accout and send bill which was b*****ks cos called tenant she gave me date her account was opened and account number, spoke to Npower again, this time excuse was they didn't have a record of me giving my opening and closing meter readings and have had to formulate account from the closing reading from of old tenant and new tenants opening reading. :mad: Yet, still no bill. I despair. Every time I have gone through the same rigmarole of readings, who was the old, who is the new tenant, who am I as apparently they can't tell who lived at the address at what time without going into every person registered at the property. What????????:mad:

Terrylw1

Well, in that case you and your tenants have done everything they should have!

The fact that you received a welcome pack means that they set an account up so they can bill you. Your new tenants have an account too so there should be no problems.

The old systes used to issue account numbers where the last digit of the account number increased each time a new account was opened (so prev tenant ended say 3, you end 4, new tenant ends 5). However, the new system they use assigns a random account number. This is a real pain since it means that they can't see the change in tenants as asy as before and must do all their searches by address.

They can easily close your account without you giving them a reading, they use estimates. However in your case they could just address search the new tenant and use their opening reading to close your account.

They are just messing you about.

I would suggest that you make a complaint and it should get resolved quickly. If not, you could write to Energywatch and let them handle it for you.

As for the enquiry letter, I'll bet that was a letter just confirming that they had received your correspondence and were looking into it. So just a standard letter and if they hadn't set your account up by then, it won't get recorded anyway. Again, another completely dumb issue generated by transferring into a far worse system than they used to use before!!!

Honestly, a lot of landlords don't do any of this and end up paying the price for trying to blag. In your case, you are doing everything you should and are still having the problem...you can't win!!!

paintpot

Hi Terry

Thanks ever so much for your advice. I would formally thank you MSE style but haven't worked it out yet. I feel like I am going mad, on the last but one call I spoke to an advisor but she kept putting me on hold, seemed to be really struggling so I told her to put me through to a manager, immediately someone else took over who declared themselves as a senior advisor or similar as it seems the CA was atrainee and so they had been listening into the call and it was her that told me firstly it was cos the new tenant hadn't opened their account then the next day I spoke to the same person and they had changed their tune and said it was cos they had no record of my opening and closing readings - she'd had to speak to the home movers department to find that out as I'd orinigally gone through to bog standard customer services and she said she didn't have access to the relevant info and would investigate. I am making records of all my calls now cos I don't trust them. I keep spreadsheets of all my readings on all my houses and a record of when I have called the utility provider with the readings so nothing fallsthrough the net like last time, they must have been sending me bills to the tenants when i was referred to the debt collector who never sent them on to me despite me giving them my home/correspondence address. I am usually on a site somewhere renovating a house so i seem to spend my evenings trying to resolve annoying issues with utility providers! I know I should complain in writing but it's all so time consuming. Most people only deal with it once in a blue moon when they move, I seem to deal with it every time a tenant moves out/in for every utility in the house - Yorkshire water have a tendency to send me the welcome pack that should go to the tenant whenever I give them a closing reading, depsite me being very conscientious with the information I give them As I say, I despair....! But :T :T

Terrylw1

Hi Paintpot,

No probs, glad to help.

It's an incredibly easy/standard process to peform and resolve when it goes wrong. This is the problem you get with call centres who are there to field as many calls as possible and deal with basic scenarios.

Best thing to do is speak to a manager if you are on the phone and getting the same problems again.

The complaints routes are the best though because a lot of the situations go to experienced back office teams who have much more time to sort things out. They are also more familiar with the typical problems and how to quickly resolve them which the call centres do not get trained on.

As far as I can say, I dealt with many landlords/tenants/letting agents over the years and most don't do what you do which makes it more complicated. They should have no problem resolving this for you.

As an aside, the last company that I know of that claimed "they couldn't bill their customers due to their system" was bought out & rebranded as they were shutdown on that basis alone!!! So, it's just an excuse because Suppliers know how much trouble they would be in. Plus, if they can't bill, they can't get paid and go under (as the Supplier did in this case...was worth £100m, got bought out for £10m...)

Good luck!!!