My Latest npower gas bill - all units charged at higher rate?

Cardew

Terrylw1 wrote: »

Ah, does this mean by any chance that you now will have a higher tier 1 block in winter but lower in summer???

It does. The allocation for each month is as shown in post #7.

NPower have been doing this for a while and there was some threads on this a year or so ago; they introduced this without any publicity and very few people noticed.

It mainly affects those who don't use a lot of gas in the summer months.

For the quarter Dec/Jan/Feb you will charged for 40.1% of your 4572kWh tier1 allocation(1833kWh) instead of the 1143kWh most companies use.

Possetjohn

powerRIP wrote: »

Just had the letter from npower saying I have been switched to weighted quarterly primary units. As I do not use gas except for winter this will cost me more than £50 extra. Well it would except I will not be using them anymore. The letter arrived today and they say it came into affect 1st Novermber.

Hi Power RIP,

Thanks for the post. Can you tell me if you have always been on a flat tier 1 (primary units) while you have been with nPower?

My complaint (see post 7) was I was on a seasonally weighted tier 1 allocation, but they switched it (without warning) to a flat rate, now its seems they will switch back to the seasonal weighting, which means you pay more than the 4752kWh yearly than you are supposed to be charged. I haven't had a letter yet though!

Like you I will also probably switch to a different supplier

Possetjohn

powerRIP wrote: »

I was only with npower for a year (just had the £80 discount - thanks npower!) so always on flat primary units so not sure about your case.

Wasn't planning on switching so quick but just don't like the way they have done this, particularly notifying customers AFTER the change and then trying to tell me over the 'phone that it would not cost me any more when it clearly will.

I also don't like the way they have the "different versions" of their online accounts to entire new customers at lower rates without passing on savings to existing customers.

According to uswitch, I will save over £100 a year with Scottish Power and I get a £25 M+S voucher just for switching.

Thanks Power RIP

Not sure why they have differences but I had always been on the monthly allocation in post 7 until the end of April when they changed it to level one at 8% per month without telling me.

All this at 4.412p/kWh which they failed to to reduce at the end of April.

To rub salt in the wound, after involving energywatch finally I have got the details of the new allocation from 1/11/07 which I guess you also received, which is really aggressive in collecting most of the 4572 kWh at the primary rate in the winter months. I have put the new and old monthly % allocations below

Month New Old
Jan 19.3% 13.8%
Feb 19.3% 13.6%
Mar 5.94% 12.2%
Apr 5.93% 12.2%
May 1% 7.1%
June 1% 4.2%
July 1% 2.4%
Aug 1% 2.4%
Sep 1% 4.2%
Oct 5.93% 7.3%
Nov 19.3% 10.3%
Dec 19.3% 12.7%

You can see they are now collecting 77% of the 4572 kWh between November and February and 95% between October and April, hence any winter only users are going to be hit harder compared with a level monthly charging. The thing that really annoys me is the way they have tried to slip this past all thier customers and when you do twig whats going on, say yes you are right, but were not going to do anything about it!!

So I will refer it back to energy watch again and am switching to southern electricity courtesy of Martins recommended comparison site
(thanks Martin:T )

I would recommend anyone else with npower looks carefully at their bills and complains if the same has happened to them

Cardew

Excellent post Possetjohn!

The annoying thing is that Npower make these changes knowing full well that 'Mr Average Consumer' will not understand the implications of their new charging structure.

Taken a leaf out of the 'Stealth Taxes' by Gordon Brown book. You can just here them saying that "we haven't changed the prices of a unit of gas at all"

I wonder how many of the other utility companies will jump on the bandwagon.