npower, Eon and Eon Next.

Anglian680

After moving in to a new house a couple of months ago that was on Npower, I’ve had the great displeasure in finding out how awful the company they are!
Due to an error that Npower had made, (registering one of my meters to another property elsewhere in the UK as well as to my house) I was unable to open an account with any other electricity supplier, except Eon. To my surprise I’ve just found out they’ve transferred my electricity account (not gas) to Eon Next without my permission. 

Has anyone had any dealings with Eon Next? I’m seriously hoping they haven’t inherited the Npower customer service staff! 

As an aside, does anyone know where the npower call centre was based?

[Deleted User]

NPower was bought out by E.oN. This is how business works. E.oN Next was set up by E.oN to make use of Octopus Energy’s technology platform - Kraken.  Ex NPower customers were the first to be moved to E.oN Next followed by E.oN ’s own customer base. You will have had contract/tariff protection.

If you are talking about a new build home, then registering meters is not the responsibility of the supplier. Electricity connections are carried out by DNOs, and gas connections by Cadent or independent gas transporters. New build issues are frustratingly difficult to sort out. I live in No 14, Plot 6. My electricity meter was allocated to Plot 14 and we had No 5s meter and so on. Suppliers are left with new build problems which are usually not of their making. It took Scottish Power nearly 6 months to update the database for 14 homes. The irony is that our local DNO is Scottish Power Energy Networks.

Call centres. NPower had a call centre in Worcester and according to the Worcester News seven other call centres - Rainton, near Sunderland, which employs around 2,000 staff; Hull; Leeds; Birmingham; Solihull; Oldbury and Swindon.

stewie_griffin

I don't think any npower staff have moved to E.ON Next as they're based in completely different parts of the UK (although a lot of the staff are now working from home).

E.ON bought npower in 2019 and started transferring the customer base over to E.ON Next last summer I think and the transition is just about complete. If your new home was supplied by npower then this would have been moved over to E.ON Next and you have no say in this. 

stewie_griffin

Just to add that all the traditional E.ON customers are now also being moved over to E.ON Next and this is scheduled to complete in about 12 months.

I know E.ON outsource a lot of their customer service to South Africa and India but don't know if the same applies to E.ON Next.

[Deleted User]

Quote:

About Kraken Technologies

Kraken Technologies offers a best-in-class end-to-end platform for energy supply. Kraken’s proprietary platform is responsible for the acquisition and ongoing management of almost 1.3 million domestic energy customers in just 3 years, and over 10,000 business customers at the same time.

Based on advanced data and machine learning capabilities, Kraken automates much of the energy supply chain to allow outstanding service and efficiency as the world transitions to a decentralised, decarbonised energy system.

Kraken Technologies is part of Octopus Energy Group, and was developed to enable select third parties to take advantage of the technologies developed by Octopus Energy.

Unquote

The Kraken platform is now used by a number of UK suppliers (including Octopus; E.oN Next and Good Energy) and internationally in Germany; the USA and Japan.

teddysmum

It is useful to know about a possible problem with call centres, as my excellent long term contract from nPower ends next month.
Foreign call centre staff seem to work from closed charts which can only help with specific questions and often returns to the start (more than once). I find not being able to understand what is said, very embarrassing, too.

Anglian680

[Deleted User] said:

NPower was bought out by E.oN. This is how business works. E.oN Next was set up by E.oN to make use of Octopus Energy’s technology platform - Kraken.  Ex NPower customers were the first to be moved to E.oN Next followed by E.oN ’s own customer base. You will have had contract/tariff protection.

If you are talking about a new build home, then registering meters is not the responsibility of the supplier. Electricity connections are carried out by DNOs, and gas connections by Cadent or independent gas transporters. New build issues are frustratingly difficult to sort out. I live in No 14, Plot 6. My electricity meter was allocated to Plot 14 and we had No 5s meter and so on. Suppliers are left with new build problems which are usually not of their making. It took Scottish Power nearly 6 months to update the database for 14 homes. The irony is that our local DNO is Scottish Power Energy Networks.

Call centres. NPower had a call centre in Worcester and according to the Worcester News seven other call centres - Rainton, near Sunderland, which employs around 2,000 staff; Hull; Leeds; Birmingham; Solihull; Oldbury and Swindon.

Thanks. I should have made it clearer: it’s not a new build. An administrative mistake by Npower (confirmed by UK Power Networks) meant one of my electricity meters was assigned on the database to a flat in a different part of Britain. 

All the people I spoke to were Africans I think. When the conversation went beyond the basic comprehension level, they just looked for someone else to put me through to. 

I was surprised they clearly had no supervisor or manager to deal with more complicated complaints. 

I’ve never come across a worse run company!

stewie_griffin

Do you know why you have more than one electricity meter any way as you did say you also had a gas account.

teddysmum

I am coming to the end of an nPower long fix and for one am not used to being pestered for monthly readings.
I know we went over the target at Christmas, as we had a dying dog who was stayed up with every night, so sent £100 to lower the  amount owed.

We were about to send readings near the end of April when a meter reader turned up .However, his readings have not been entered and estimated charges applied. Next came a couple of emails saying pay up all debit or face a large payment increase. The point is that their bills only give the cost of each item with no mention of how it is made up and no mention of kwh as with nPower. [I have since found the details after finding a link I missed; blame the drugs painkiller drugs I'm on] 

A few minutes ago I submitted readings for today, which are supposed to put right any estimated reading, but instead they have just made an extra charge for the time since the estimate . You can't call as lines are closed for the bank holiday weekend, but why if using foreign call centres who probably don't have the holiday ?

On the website the tariff prices are almost useless as it doesn't explain what the tariffs are, beyond the 1 and 2 indicating a one or two year fix. Each of the fixes have a version 1 and 2 , so what do they mean ? There is also no mention of Eon's refusal any tariff but variable, if you don't want a smart meter, though they have also pestered about a date for fitting.

People moaned about nPower, but I had no problem and wish I cold go back. Time to find another provider .

teddysmum

I have now found that I can't calculate the figures for gas , as they don't, again unlike nPower, quote the values needed to change cubic metres, from the meter, to kwh.

Gerry1

teddysmum said:

I have now found that I can't calculate the figures for gas , as they don't, again unlike nPower, quote the values needed to change cubic metres, from the meter, to kwh.

Gas kWh Conversion