NPower Back-Billed 2016 To Correct Gas Unit

Martinhill001

Hi,
I hope someone can advise me in this matter as to whether it is worth pursuing this matter.
NPower has recalculated (‘back-billed’) all our bills going back 2 years now that we have decided to move to another energy provider and our final bill was £944.71.

Our balance was much lower than this figure and we have always kept up with our payments, but NPower on the 9 February 2018 had recalculated all the statements online back to the start of 2016 - fortunately I have a paper statement for the period 28 December 2016 to 27 March 2017 that showed our balance was at the end of this period was in credit of £116.97. It also shows the credit from the previous statement as £241.91. Crucially it also showed that they were using the wrong gas unit (cubic metre), which now I realise should have been ‘100s of cubic ft.’ and the probable reason for NPower’s recalculation. Consequently, we were being underbilled in 2016 for gas. So, I did some calculations of my own.

In 2016 NPower took payments of around £80 a month with low gas costs and electricity being calculated correctly against the tariff. Then 2017 the payments were reduced to around £30 a month because of our credit. And then we ended with NPower on 27 January 2018.

2016: Total Paid = £951.19 Elec (3,446 units) = £498.96 Gas (582 units) = £273.38
2017/18: Total Paid = £428 Elec (2,637 units) = £364.19* Gas (723 units) = £648.87
*Switched to Economy 7 tariffs and actual final reading being agreed with new energy provider but the number of units is close to 2,637 units.

I have read from the references (link given at bottom of this post):
“A back bill is often called a ‘catch-up’ bill. It shows your charges either when your energy supplier hasn’t billed you at all, or when you’ve been billed incorrectly for the energy you’ve used. Back bills can be for any amount. However, if suppliers have made a mistake, they have agreed to limit when and how far back they can charge you to no more than one year.”

Which seems to apply in this case.
Furthermore, a scenario from Energy UK reads:

“Back-billing sub-clause 8: Your supplier has failed to set up or maintain accurate meter and metering information on your account.

Scenario 1. Your meter was changed on 31 March 2014. However, the new meter details were not updated in your supplier’s system. When meter readings were received, your supplier rejected these as being out of line with the account and meter history, and they billed you using an estimate.
This was sorted out on 30 November 2016, when your supplier updated the correct meter details and used the meter readings.

Would your supplier consider applying the back-billing principle?
Yes. Your supplier has not updated their system with the new meter details. So, as long as the estimated bills to you were lower than the actual energy you used (meaning that your debt has increased), the back-billing principle would apply.”

Although my case is slightly different from the scenario, NPower have failed to set up or maintain accurate meter and metering information on my account when we were transferred to them in the first place.

We have just paid £600 towards the final bill as I have calculated that if the ‘back-billing principle’ had been applied correctly it would limit how far back NPower would charge us to ‘no more than one year’ (i.e. not charge again for 2016). And we have been over-billed by something like £343.35.

Are we right to try and claim this money back? And should NPower disagree with us should we make this a complaint.

We have already received emails to pay by 2 March 2018, with the suggestion that this may affect our credit rating if we don’t pay. Some one at NPower had said that they would put a note on account that will give us until the end of March to pay, but we don’t have that in writing.

I would appreciate some feedback please.

Thanks,
Martin.

P.S.
Not allowed to put in url so you can search for in google:
'NPower Code of practice for accurate bills'
‘Back-billing scenarios for domestic customers - June 2017.pdf’

By the way NPower got a bronze award for Energy UK Billing Code Audit 2017, all the other suppliers taking part (EDF Energy, British Gas, E.ON, ScottishPower) got higher awards :A.

nPower

Martinhill001 wrote: »

Hi,
I hope someone can advise me in this matter as to whether it is worth pursuing this matter.
NPower has recalculated (‘back-billed’) all our bills going back 2 years now that we have decided to move to another energy provider and our final bill was £944.71.

Our balance was much lower than this figure and we have always kept up with our payments, but NPower on the 9 February 2018 had recalculated all the statements online back to the start of 2016 - fortunately I have a paper statement for the period 28 December 2016 to 27 March 2017 that showed our balance was at the end of this period was in credit of £116.97. It also shows the credit from the previous statement as £241.91. Crucially it also showed that they were using the wrong gas unit (cubic metre), which now I realise should have been ‘100s of cubic ft.’ and the probable reason for NPower’s recalculation. Consequently, we were being underbilled in 2016 for gas. So, I did some calculations of my own.

In 2016 NPower took payments of around £80 a month with low gas costs and electricity being calculated correctly against the tariff. Then 2017 the payments were reduced to around £30 a month because of our credit. And then we ended with NPower on 27 January 2018.

2016: Total Paid = £951.19 Elec (3,446 units) = £498.96 Gas (582 units) = £273.38
2017/18: Total Paid = £428 Elec (2,637 units) = £364.19* Gas (723 units) = £648.87
*Switched to Economy 7 tariffs and actual final reading being agreed with new energy provider but the number of units is close to 2,637 units.

I have read from the references (link given at bottom of this post):
“A back bill is often called a ‘catch-up’ bill. It shows your charges either when your energy supplier hasn’t billed you at all, or when you’ve been billed incorrectly for the energy you’ve used. Back bills can be for any amount. However, if suppliers have made a mistake, they have agreed to limit when and how far back they can charge you to no more than one year.”

Which seems to apply in this case.
Furthermore, a scenario from Energy UK reads:

“Back-billing sub-clause 8: Your supplier has failed to set up or maintain accurate meter and metering information on your account.

Scenario 1. Your meter was changed on 31 March 2014. However, the new meter details were not updated in your supplier’s system. When meter readings were received, your supplier rejected these as being out of line with the account and meter history, and they billed you using an estimate.
This was sorted out on 30 November 2016, when your supplier updated the correct meter details and used the meter readings.

Would your supplier consider applying the back-billing principle?
Yes. Your supplier has not updated their system with the new meter details. So, as long as the estimated bills to you were lower than the actual energy you used (meaning that your debt has increased), the back-billing principle would apply.”

Although my case is slightly different from the scenario, NPower have failed to set up or maintain accurate meter and metering information on my account when we were transferred to them in the first place.

We have just paid £600 towards the final bill as I have calculated that if the ‘back-billing principle’ had been applied correctly it would limit how far back NPower would charge us to ‘no more than one year’ (i.e. not charge again for 2016). And we have been over-billed by something like £343.35.

Are we right to try and claim this money back? And should NPower disagree with us should we make this a complaint.

We have already received emails to pay by 2 March 2018, with the suggestion that this may affect our credit rating if we don’t pay. Some one at NPower had said that they would put a note on account that will give us until the end of March to pay, but we don’t have that in writing.

I would appreciate some feedback please.

Thanks,
Martin.

P.S.
Not allowed to put in url so you can search for in google:
'NPower Code of practice for accurate bills'
‘Back-billing scenarios for domestic customers - June 2017.pdf’

By the way NPower got a bronze award for Energy UK Billing Code Audit 2017, all the other suppliers taking part (EDF Energy, British Gas, E.ON, ScottishPower) got higher awards :A.

Hi Martinhill001

Thank you for posting, I'm sorry to hear you are experiencing problems with your final bill. I will be happy to take a look at this if you would like to send me an email (using the address from my profile) with your account details.

Thanks

Vicky

dogshome

You have my sympathy and whilst you can give a back-billing claim a go, I don't hold out much hope.

The info NP used to determine the type of meter you have would have come from the National Data base for gas meters - How this error was made and who made it, is probably impossible to determine as it's now been corrected.

The stark reality is that you are being asked to pay for the quantity of gas you have actually used, which was 183% more than was billed for. - It's a blessing the account was in credit as that soaks up some of debt.

However, this is n'power who's accounting systems are not of the best.
Check the demand by going thro' the old bills - Divide the cost of the gas by 100, then multiply the answer by 283 - This is what you should have paid for the gas and remember this will also affect the VAT

Martinhill001

Thanks Vicky,

I will send our details through.

Martinhill001

Thanks Dogshome for you suggestions.

The summary I posted of 2016-2017/8 was by going though the old bills and making my own calculations. And I can see that NPower reached a final bill of £944.71 by recalculating using the factor of 2.83 conversion for gas units of 100s of cubit ft to cubic metres.

House_Martin

Martinhill001 wrote: »

Thanks Dogshome for you suggestions.

The summary I posted of 2016-2017/8 was by going though the old bills and making my own calculations. And I can see that NPower reached a final bill of £944.71 by recalculating using the factor of 2.83 conversion for gas units of 100s of cubit ft to cubic metres.

In 20 years as a meter reader I`ve seen hundreds of these mistakes with the metric/imperial meter.
It quite often go`s the other way when they are billed 2.8 times more for their gas and many still do not spot the error in their billing to see that the kwh calculation is nt 11.2 but 31 . When it happens like that every penny is repaid to the customer once the fault is discovered..
I have seen Npower backbill a struggling one parent family young lady over £1500 and when she could nt afford it they force fitted a prepayment meter and added £16 debt repayment every week for nearly 2 years ..All through no fault of her own. She never complained about this to the Energy Ombudsman. She should have done because the E.O. may well ask the supplier to reduce the back billing demand or even scrap it.
I have seen the same complaint on here with an EDF customer who got the whole back bill dropped once the threat of an E.O. was invoked by the customer

Martinhill001

Good news,
We followed up on the email we sent to NPower that documented our case, with a phone call. We pursued it as a complaint and it got passed through to the complaints department. Once there it was quickly reviewed and the immediate response was that we shouldn't have been back-billed for 2016.
So I am now waiting back on NPower as to what they now reckon the final bill to be.

CashStrapped

Great news

Martinhill001

This is the end of story with NPower.
After raising the complaint and being told the back billing will be sorted, we waited for some email from NPower to come. Will waiting we saw our balance was in credit £2367.28 - Wow that was more than I was expecting!!
It would be nice to have gotten an email in response to our complaint. In the end we saw that we were refunded £44.18 following an amended final energy statement.

The end result was to reduce the final bill from £944.71 to £555.82 - that is a difference of £388.89!

matelodave

Good one, but it does show the benefit of saving bills for several years and making sure that you you check the bills against the meter to establish that the readings and the units correspond and that the tariffs are correct.

Monthly readings in future, eh?

monty64

From 1 May 2018 it is now law that back-billing beyond 12months is banned ( see OFGEM etc). Prior to this it was just a code of practice. Except that if you have prevented the energy supplier from billing accurately ( eg not allowing meter readers in, failing to supply actual customer readings etc) you may not be able to rely on this. In my current case, this new law has been ignored until I complained.
Also the imperial/ metric meter error hit the headlines in August 2016 with many customers being overcharged ( those who had switched from an imperial to a metric meter but whose useage was still multiplied by the 2.83 conversion factor form cubic feet (meter read is in 100s) to cubic meters) by 165% !. Also some people were undercharged ( as in this thread's case). The Ombudsman investigated and suppliers committed to refund ( with interest and compensation) those overcharged and NOT to charge those undercharged for the past ( see Ombudsman services statement) and to help them with the transition to future higher bills in cases of hardship.
So question, should there be a back bill at all in this case, rather than a higher back bill but only for the last 12m?? In my case again ( meter error) this 2016 ruling was not mentioned by my energy supplier
ie they have ignored both rulings and backbilled for for 30 months. The energy suppliers have committed to be open and fair, but have kept me in the dark. Thank heavens for online searches.