Npower £16,000+ final bill

alivesey

Hello,

I need help with an Npower final bill. About 8 months, Npower stated that I had a bill of circa £9,000. Fast forward 8 months, I have now sold my flat, negotiated bills with Npower and my final bill now looks to be over £10,000. The bill from Npower has fluctuated from over £10,000 to them owing my £5,000+.

The flat was a 3 bedroom, with myself and my wife being the only residence. The flat was all electrical, but we had efficient heaters, LED lighting, new appliances and worked full time. We also paid ongoing bills of about £70 per month over the 3 years of living in the flat.

I have reviewed photos I have of the meter and they jump up and down. The meter is a horstmann radio telemeter series 2a twin element and has 4 read outs.

Reading Date 1.1 2.1 1.2 2.2
27.04.2015 69339 14519 88192 47052
22.09.2017 01014 25774 75465 26320
30.08.2018 12948 31036 77895 45721
03.11.2018 14760 31796 77921 45738

Npower are now stating that my meters appears to have clocked and gone back to zero, so my final bill is £16,000+. It is clear that there is an error with the meter or Npower are not reading it correctly. Npower now want to get access to the flat with the new owner (who is an elderly disabled gentleman) to check the meter and bill me based on the new owners usage.

I need help with the how to proceed with Npower and if there are any experts on how to read these 4 meter readings.

This is a brief summary of the past 8 months of stress and anxiety with a massive debt hanging over me.

HampshireH

When did you move out?

And are the meters inside the flat? I genuinely cannot assist except that any usage by the new owners will be far less than NPower are claiming or it will evidence the fault.

If you have photos of your readings however and had been routinely submiting them it seems odd that this wasnt picked up on general billing.

Were all your bills estaimated?

matelodave

It gets really difficult to pick the bones out of meter readings when they only get read once every 3-12 months as the energy company will be trying to estimate how much you are using. Had you been correcting bills/statements when they were estimated?

Likewise you can't see if there's a problem developing because you dont have a sufficient number of actual readings close enough together to see what is going on.

Keeping your own log of weekly or even monthly readings would have been a good idea when it started looking a bit strange and you got a bill of around £9k.Have you kept any of the the previous bills, how many are estimates and how many are based on actual readings.

Short of gathering up all previous data and trying to get a handle of what went wrong and when, I'm not sure what advice to give. Perhaps the CAB could help but you'd need info and bills to help them try and sort it out. I'm guessing that £16,000 is very wrong, even the £9000 doesn't seem right either but you really do need to know when it went wrong.

May I suggest that should be a bit more dilligent in the future in reading meters at least monthly and keeping your own records.

Robin9

alivesey wrote: »

The meter is a horstmann radio telemeter series 2a twin element and has 4 read outs.

Reading Date 1.1 2.1 1.2 2.2
27.04.2015 69339 14519 88192 47052
22.09.2017 01014 25774 75465 26320
30.08.2018 12948 31036 77895 45721
03.11.2018 14760 31796 77921 45738

.

I think the meter details you quote are for the optical reading and not the meter itself.

Of the 4 registers only one of them will be the kwh but which one ?/

Are all of these readings quoted on your bills and are there unit rates against each one ?

Carrot007

Kind of hard without knowing the tarrif. As susual if you PM me the meter serial or address I can look for you (in an unofficial capacity). The common 4 read npower one is supoer tarrif in the north east but 1 register should not move it that were the case.


Also all electrical heating is pretty much the same efficiency. The only was to save on it is not the heat the entire space.

[Deleted User]

I see this meter fairly often but only in a an eco 7 set up. Sounds like yours is Eco 10 or a scottish type legacy meter with a 3 hour boost.
First press of blue button is always rate 1 (now ) peak period kwhs..Second press is low/off peak rate 2 .I m assuming rate 3 would be the three hour boost period and the fourth reading is the total kwhs of the three rates combined.
Npower, like all suppliers , will frequently transpose these 4 readings with their computers issuing either a low or high bill. Once the total kwhs rate reaches 100,00 units it restarts at zero, and so do the other rates, so it won t add up to the grand total of the other three. Npower have to look carefully at the figures manually and not rely on the computer to print out a bill
I have seen an example of Npower just issuing a catch up bill without explanation of what or why this has come about.
I think you should try and check the actual 4 readings on the meter to ensure you know precisely which period the 4 rates are covering and they have nt been transposing the 4 rates with incorrect pricing.
eg have they been billing you night rate for the day rate ?

nPower

alivesey wrote: »

Hello,

I need help with an Npower final bill. About 8 months, Npower stated that I had a bill of circa £9,000. Fast forward 8 months, I have now sold my flat, negotiated bills with Npower and my final bill now looks to be over £10,000. The bill from Npower has fluctuated from over £10,000 to them owing my £5,000+.

The flat was a 3 bedroom, with myself and my wife being the only residence. The flat was all electrical, but we had efficient heaters, LED lighting, new appliances and worked full time. We also paid ongoing bills of about £70 per month over the 3 years of living in the flat.

I have reviewed photos I have of the meter and they jump up and down. The meter is a horstmann radio telemeter series 2a twin element and has 4 read outs.

Reading Date 1.1 2.1 1.2 2.2
27.04.2015 69339 14519 88192 47052
22.09.2017 01014 25774 75465 26320
30.08.2018 12948 31036 77895 45721
03.11.2018 14760 31796 77921 45738

Npower are now stating that my meters appears to have clocked and gone back to zero, so my final bill is £16,000+. It is clear that there is an error with the meter or Npower are not reading it correctly. Npower now want to get access to the flat with the new owner (who is an elderly disabled gentleman) to check the meter and bill me based on the new owners usage.

I need help with the how to proceed with Npower and if there are any experts on how to read these 4 meter readings.

This is a brief summary of the past 8 months of stress and anxiety with a massive debt hanging over me.

Hello alivesey,

thank you for your post and I am sorry to hear of your experience.

Can you please send us an email with your account information to the address on our profile page so we can look into this further for you.

Thanks, Carmel

Anthony_C

matelodave wrote: »

It gets really difficult to pick the bones out of meter readings when they only get read once every 3-12 months as the energy company will be trying to estimate how much you are using. Had you been correcting bills/statements when they were estimated?

Likewise you can't see if there's a problem developing because you dont have a sufficient number of actual readings close enough together to see what is going on.

Keeping your own log of weekly or even monthly readings would have been a good idea when it started looking a bit strange and you got a bill of around £9k.Have you kept any of the the previous bills, how many are estimates and how many are based on actual readings.

Short of gathering up all previous data and trying to get a handle of what went wrong and when, I'm not sure what advice to give. Perhaps the CAB could help but you'd need info and bills to help them try and sort it out. I'm guessing that £16,000 is very wrong, even the £9000 doesn't seem right either but you really do need to know when it went wrong.

May I suggest that should be a bit more dilligent in the future in reading meters at least monthly and keeping your own records.

Good to see a response by nPower

I am professionally interested in this matter. How does the size of the bill in £s, relate in average kWh daily/monthly consumption?

alivesey

@HampshireH We moved out of the flat in May and the flat has been vacant until we sold it earlier this month. We were made aware of the bill in June 2018. The bills have been based on an estimate. However, Npower had sent 2 engineers around to read our meter. The result of the first engineer's visit was that were were using less energy than estimated and our bill reduced. The second visit resulted in the £10,000 bill. We had not submitted and readings due to the complexity of the meter readings and Npower and myself being un able to understand the 4 readings.

@Carrot007 The flat is in the north east, I will send you a PM.
@matelodave we now keep monthly readings in our new home.

@Robin9 and Houbara, could you explain the 4 readings further? Our bills originally had a zero value for one of the 4 readings, however the meter indicated a number. I assume that due to the age of the meter, it is not as straight as forward as reading the value on the meter, as it is likely clocked past the maximum value.

@nPower I have sent an email to the address as requested. I have paid my monthly bill as estimate, at a reasonable rate. I ask you to close this matter at a zero balance.

My bill has a Standard SC Electricity DD Economy 7 tariff and a Standard SC Electricity DD Super Tariff. We have 4 values on the bill, a day, night and 2 heat, 1 of which is zero.

OPMDaze

Not much help I'm afraid but whatever Npower try to get you to do, do not give them your bank details.
Also found the Npower staff that post on here as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike. Presume it's just a front because of their embarrassing complaints record.