nPower problem

Yorkshire_tyke

Sooooooo,
I've been in my house nearly 2 years and I have an economy 7 electric meter. The 'night' part of the meter hasn't moved since we've been in. I never noticed as I just read the meter when asked and I don't make a note of the numbers. It may be that the day part turns at night, I've just been advised to check this.

NPower have only just spotted it. They've wrongly said it's the day one that's not moving so have kindly removed all the provided meter readings from my account over the last two years and replaced them with an obviously higher estimated reading. Yay! They 'cancelled' previous bills / statements and issued new ones based on their estimates. They've then just added 600 odd quid to my account without warning. I was previously over £400 in credit and I'm now over £200 in debit. They haven't corrected for the overnight readings. On the statements they've described the new estimates as 'read by nPower' when they've never been to read it.

They have no evidence that I'm not turning the power off at night and the meter reading is accurate. Obviously the day one is right and they need a kicking. The night one being static may or may not be correct.


I might be just being over suspicious but this is happening as my contract is due up and I haven't yet renewed. With an account in credit it seems too much of a coincidence that they are making these estimates and taking money from it at this specific time.


They also started sending me threatening emails saying they had tried to contact me and they would force entry to change the meter if I didn't contact them and charge me for the bailiffs to break in. No contact prior, no missed calls, no letters just the nasty email. I called them to try to book in a replacement meter install and they had no appointments. Cue a more threatening email. Finally got an appointment.


I'm obviously prepared to pay for power I've used, it's only fair, but their approach is far from that. Any thoughts? Obviously I'll complain but I'd like to know where I stand on the meter readings.

nPower

Hi Yorkshire tyke

Sorry to hear of your concerns. Please contact us via the address showing on our profile and we'll look further into the billing for you. Thanks :-)

Gerry1

The old spinning disc meters could certainly get stuck. This happened to an elderly relative of mine over a decade ago. She didn't have a washing machine or tumble drier (everything went to the laundry), she had GCH and an Aga so there were no high current loads to make it budge.

I started to read the meter because she'd never changed her supplier and I noticed the reading hadn't changed.

I thought that they should take the hit because it's a risk they choose to accept by reading the meter so infrequently, but I suspected they would just use an estimate; this would have been far higher than the reality because she'd been in hospital for several weeks.

Wickedly, I just plugged in her oil filled electric radiator and left it on 24/7 as background heating...

Sure enough, they spotted that the meter was faulty and had to be changed, but they insisted that there was no alternative to the estimated bill based on previous usage. All mentions of having been in hospital fell on deaf ears, so I was very glad that I'd had the foresight to be so cynical !

Yorkshire_tyke

Hi Gerry
thanks for your reply. This type of situation bugs me. Testing the meter for faults only proves there is a fault at the time of the test and not in the run up to the test. You should have been due an apology on that one.

Yorkshire_tyke

Just updating in case it gets searched...
Having checked my meter last night I found that it is only running on the 'day' meter. It does not switch onto the night meter at night. The day meter does continue to run through the night and it does clock up usage. Its running as just a regular single meter and doesn't appear to be faulty. Not impressed at having to get up through the night to sort this but I'm fairly sure this should resolve it. I'll update on the resolution with nPower who will find out about this shortly.

Yorkshire_tyke

nPower wrote: »

Hi Yorkshire tyke

Sorry to hear of your concerns. Please contact us via the address showing on our profile and we'll look further into the billing for you. Thanks :-)

You have mail.