All Help Greatly Appreciated...

tompipe

I have already posted brief details of my complaint with Npower, I've now received a reponse from them and I'd appreciate some advice.

Letter 1
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Dear Sir or Madam,
We are writing in regards to our recent energy bills received on the 1st February 2008. We are shocked that the bills are so high, and appalled that you expect us to pay over £3000 within 14 days.
To ensure the bills were correct customer services were contacted and a list of meter reading obtained since we took tenancy of the property. As expected, there were no records of an inspector reading our electric meter during our tenancy. Out of curiosity we called back and asked the advisor to find out when the last reading was made by an inspector at this property. After searching through an old system, the advisor provided us with further meter readings, and informed us that the last accepted meter reading by an inspector was May 2005, 14 months before we took over tenancy of the property.
After examining the electricity meter readings, your advisor discussed various inconsistencies with us, and mentioned that they thought the meter had been replaced or could potentially be faulty. The notable inconsistencies are stated below.
In May 2005 an inspector read 76342 from the meter, then in December 2005 you accepted a customer reading of 5265 even though for it to be correct, an average of 130kWh per day must have been consumed; almost 16 times higher than the UK average.
When we moved in to the property in July 2006, Mr XXXX provided you with meter readings, however, the advisor he spoke to informed him that “the reading doesn’t seem right” and would send someone to read the meter, over a month later in August 2006 our meter was read by an inspector and according to the advisor I spoke to, his reading was dismissed for being inaccurate.
18 months later in January 2008, an inspector reads our meter again and even though the discrepancy between the last estimated reading and the actual reading is more than the one you dismissed in August 2006 and more than the one you accepted in December 2005, you use this reading to correct our estimated bill, stating that we have consumed 23996kWh more than you have estimated. This is highly inaccurate because your bills have always been based on an incorrect reading, and as you do not have an accurate reading around the time the tenancy changed, some of this electricity would have been consumed by previous tenants.
Taking into consideration the above points and the stipulation in the Energy Retail Association’s 2007 code of practice, stating that consumers should be protected from debt where the supplier is at fault for not billing energy supply. If you can provide an updated, accurate calculation and breakdown of the electricity we have consumed whilst tenants of the property, we will happily pay for it, we will not pay for the electricity we should not be charged for; whether used by previous tenants or consumed prior to 30/01/2007 (as you are at fault for the mistakes stated above; consequently you shouldn’t back-bill for electricity consumed more than 12 months ago).
The meter readings for gas are in line, so the 12886kWh adjustment for the gas appears to be correct. We have attempted to calculate a ‘fair-share’ for each tenant based on the number of months they lived at the property (see enclosed), and the total tenants within the property at that time.
As you can see from the enclosed tenancy agreements a number of residents have vacated the property since we originally moved in, only the people listed on this letter are currently tenants however as some have only recently moved in it would be unfair to expect them to pay the arrears accrued before their tenancy began.
We are in consultation with the landlord to obtain forwarding addresses or contact details for past tenants. If we are unsuccessful in tracking them down, there will be some monies outstanding that the previous tenants are responsible for.
Being a mainly student household, we are unable to pay the outstanding amount whilst the amount is in dispute. You have already issued a reminder, and to prevent further reminders/threatening letters we would be grateful if you could arrange a payment plan where the outstanding amount can be spread over the same amount of time that it has accrued.
If you do not reply to this letter within 14 days with an acceptable resolution, we will contact the Energy Supply Ombudsman and make a formal complaint and upon resolution, transfer our account to another supplier. With you currently holding 2nd place for the highest number of complaints and losing a huge number of customers due to the recent price increase, we are sure you will settle this amicably without forcing us to involve EnergyWatch.
In the meantime, could you send us a free clip on energy monitor to monitor our daily consumption of electricity whilst this dispute is resolved?
Yours Sincerely
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Approximately 10 days later I spoke to collections regarding a reminder they had issued, they noticed a marker on the account indicating an open dispute. So transfered me to customer services. I got cut off and didnt call back.

A week later we have a threatening letter, so I call customer services who informed me that he could see no indicator of a dispute and to contact correspondence to see if my letter had been received. They told me that no letter had been receieved and provided me with a fax number to send it to. I checked the fax number with him yet on attempting to send the fax, I get the error "not a fax machine".

Irate, I decided to email the following:

Please see the complaint below and attached letter.

Due to your customer services representative providing the wrong fax number earlier today, I have now escalated this complaint to energy watch as I think that this, the alleged non-receipt of the letter and the markers disappearing from your systems regarding the dispute are cheap delaying tactics and an attempt to avoid providing an immediate response to our complaint. The case number provided by energy watch is 1624264. Hopefully I will get a more helpful response from them.

In the meantime, if you feel like entering into any dialogue or correspondence regarding the issue, you have our contact details.

Regards

Fax I tried to send
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Please find attached the letter of complaint and relevant attachments I posted to your office in late February.

On the 29th February after receiving a letter from a debt collections agency, I called customer services and spoke to someone who informed me that to prevent the matter escalating further we needed to make a payment onto of £110 for the Gas account within 7 days. When I questioned the electricity account, the representative informed me that she could see that a dispute was active on that account and that they have received the letter and would transfer me to customer services. I got cut off and didnt call back.

When I spoke to customer services earlier today, they informed me there were no disputes active on either account and I should contact the correspondence department to find out if the letter had been received. They told me that no letter had been received and provided me with the fax number to get the complaint handled a little quicker.

In the original letter I specified 14 days for an acceptable resolution, but as you are now bombarding us with payment reminders and have issued disconnection notices for Monday 17th March, I require that a marker be immediately placed on our accounts to prevent disconnection and a written resolution issued within 10 days. This issue has also been raised with Energywatch.

As you can see from the payment history, all current tenants at the property have made payments for their share of the gas. The account has only been in our name since January 2008 and I am still in liaison with the landlord to obtain forwarding addresses for the past tenants. It is unethical to threaten us with disconnection when we have fulfilled our obligations and paid the amount we clearly owe. When you can provide us with an amount for our share of the electricity used at the property we will happily pay that too, until then we cannot afford to pay the ludicrous £2917 outstanding.

Regards


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I received no response and it took a call from energywatch to prompt them into eventually responding with the following amended bill:



Obviously this is still ridiculous, so I have just written the following response:

Thank you for adjusting our account and issuing an amended bill dated 14 March 2008. However, this has not resolved our complaint satisfactorily; there are a number of inconsistencies that need addressing.
Firstly, I refer to the telephone call I made to inform that Mr XXX had terminated his tenancy and would no longer reside at the property. Under the Data Protection Act the specifics of his account should not have been discussed with us and your terms and conditions state that a final bill should have been issued to Mr XXX and his agreement should have ended and a new agreement opened in our names.
Secondly, I refer to the arrears which have been transferred to us. By amending the bill you have adjusted the total to £2074.42, yet I can find no clear, accurate methods used to make the amendments and you have issued no explanation as to how you have done so. During my telephone call around the 13th March I was informed that the bill would be recalculated by taking the meter readings used in August and October 2006. I checked back to the list of meter readings provided by your customer services representative during the phone call on Thursday 7th February. The representative assured me she had provided every meter reading, yet I was not informed of a meter reading during October 2006. Can you explain where this reading has appeared from?
The amended bill speculates that 36kWh have been used every day since July 2006. We find this highly unlikely as the chances of using the same amount of electricity in one month to the next are massive, the odds for using the same amount every day for 18 months down to one decimal place, must be astronomical. I’m sure you are aware that the exact amount of electricity consumed is based on numerous factors including, but not limited to:
During summer months there is more natural light, reducing the need for electric lighting.
Some tenants are students so vacate the property and return home for the summer.
Tenants have moved out and new tenants moved in, and all use different appliances.
The landlord did not provide us with a tumble drier until December 2007.
Also, the figure you accuse us of using is way above the UK average, and is higher than the record I have been keeping since lodging the complaint, and on the amended bill it states that between the 04/01/08 and 28/07/06 (dates are not a typo), 652kWh were consumed, how is this possible?
Therefore your proposed resolution is erroneous and significantly flawed and we are not willing to accept it without thorough written explanations for the following:
A step by step explanation of the amended bill with reasons for each split or breakdown,
A statement regarding the breach of the data protection act,
Full details of the meter readings for this property including date/time taken, by who, and date/time entered onto your system.
As specified in our previous letters, we will not be making payment until a clear, accurate bill is issued, so to prevent any threatening letters, we also require the account to be placed on hold whilst this dispute is resolved.
We look forward to hearing your response.

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I will be taking this back to energy watch tommorow, I'm wondering if anyone has been through a similar experience.

I appreciate anyone's comments or advice.

Terrylw1

The dates on the bill 04/01/2008 - 28/07/2006 are a typo, otherwise these dates span other estimates across the bill and thats not how the bill works. So, the date is for an earlier period up to 28/07/2006 but we don't know what.

This stuff is sadly common and Npower won't care too much about how they rank in the complaints table since they have made no effort to current it so far. In fact, Npower's demise in terms of complaints is due to a recent system change where they have transferred all of the residential customers into a Northern Electric system. Since that date, their complaints have skyrocketed.

It's not possible to actually understand the correct course of action here with more readings. In your post you have a 'meter rollover' scenario which has been the cause of the high debt. However, without knowing what your readings from your meter actually look like it's not possible to advise whether the rollover is incorrect.

Do you have any further readings and dates that would help to understand how you should have been billed? Have you detailed that in your letter to Energywatch? If not, Npower will probably delay it further.