NPower gas 'sculpting'

Sterling

Sterling wrote: »

Until now, I have held back my own claim, but despite the fact that I am pursuing a complaint against Ofgem regarding its ineffectual investigation into npower’s sculpting actions (of which I will write more later) I propose to commence my own claim against npower in the course of the next few days.

I have in my hand a cheque from npower for £1,351.43, being the total amount of my gas sculpting claim, and it took me just fifty seven days (and three letters) to receive it.

Furthermore, it was not even necessary for me to start court proceedings, let alone take the matter to a hearing; and so I had no court fees to pay prior to receiving the cheque.

Could any affected npower gas customer have done this? Yes, if they haven’t already claimed and been paid.

Who is an affected customer? Any npower domestic gas customer who was on a two tier tariff in any continuous period of 12 months or more that includes at least one of the following dates, namely 1st May 2007 and 1st November 2007.

These are the dates in 2007 when npower made its now infamous changes in how it billed two tier tariff gas customers, and which resulted in its billing those customers too much for a year’s gas.

There is also an earlier and similar change that npower made on 1st October 2004 that is technically not yet beyond the legal barrier of six years that may also apply to many customers who have at least a year with npower that straddles that date.

How come my claim is for so much money? My basic claim was in fact only for £96.36. The remainder of the claim is simply the value I placed upon my time that I spent as a direct result of npower’s 2007 billing changes, lack of proper notice and resulting breaches of contract.

My basic claim for £96.36arose because taking the year beginning 1st March 2007 I was billed for a total of 6792 high tier units. However, the stated maximum is 4572 high tier units in “any continuous period of 12 months”. This means that I was charged for 2220 units at the high rate that should have been billed at the low rate. This resulted in my overpaying npower by £96.36 including VAT.

In my first letter to npower I wrote

“As a customer of npower from April 2006 onwards, I suffered various consequences of npower’s above mentioned actions and unlawful failures to communicate notice of its said changes. I spent a great deal of my time and effort trying to fathom out what was happening to my gas bills from npower, both as regards the apportionment of high tier units on the bills (including pro rata for parts of months shown on bills), and because by then I realised that I also may be paying for too many high tier units cumulatively. This subsequently involved me in a considerable amount of time, effort and inconvenience researching the whole matter far in excess of my time specifically itemised and mentioned elsewhere in this letter”

I placed a value of this miscellaneous time at £600, based on 30 hours at £20 per hour. I then added in my time at the same hourly rate for more specific matters such as writing the three letters and perusing a particularly baffling npower bill received in March of this year (now replaced), bringing the total value of my time up to the date of my third letter to £1,225.07, and my claim to a total of £1,351.43.

My first letter (dated 30th July) was headed “Letter Before Action” and I gave npower 30 days to settle in full, adding that otherwise I would commence county court proceedings without further warning. I felt 30 days was more than enough time for npower to investigate my claim and reach a decision. I had made no other approach to npower before this whatever.

I then received a letter from an npower customer service advisor in reply trotting out the usual bland responses, and claiming that I had already been compensated by virtue of a price reduction on 1st May 2007 and that my claim of being charged for too many high tier units was being investigated by another department. The writer added the words

“I should make you aware, however, that we will not consider compensation at the level you are requesting.”

I wrote back again stating in detail why its so-called compensation was an utter fabrication, and reminded npower of the deadline I had set for court proceedings if my claim wasn’t settled in full.

I then received a letter in response from a solicitor in npower’s legal department who in effect spent the next four pages explaining why npower didn’t owe me anything at all.

I replied with a letter dated 7th September asking around 40 searching questions regarding his letter and the matter generally, and I set a deadline of 21 days for him to reply to those questions or settle my claim in full, which by then totalled £1,351.43. I stated that if this matter went to court, the questions I had asked would have to be answered either before or during a hearing.

I settled back and waited. Three days before the deadline was about to expire I received an email from the same person in the legal department, saying npower was settling my claim in full; the following morning the paper version of the same letter arrived by special recorded delivery post together with npower’s cheque for the full amount of £1,351.43. The email and paper letter both stated that this payment was merely a goodwill gesture, and without any admission of liability. But of course they would say that wouldn’t they?

The fact is that all the denials, dodgy defences and excuses that npower had thrown at me in their previous two letters had crumbled away to nothing; all resistance had gone.

The three letters I wrote are way too lengthy to place on this thread, but as the facts are pretty much the same for every claim, adapting them for other peoples’ claims should not be a problem.

This way of claiming (for time spent) has an advantage over the “stage 2” claim approach of DD’s, which though most ingenious can vary greatly from customer to customer as its value depends upon how long before either 2007 change the claimant joined npower, and claimants have a lot of calculations to perform.

My approach in lieu of stage 2 simply depends upon a reasonable assessment of the time spent by the claimant and a reasonable hourly rate. Multiply one by the other and you have a valuation for your general time, and then add in the time spent writing letters etc as the matter proceeds at the same hourly rate. Finally, one must add in the basic claim.

If you were affected by npower’s changes either in May or November 2007 (or both), would like to make a similar claim, and have not done so already, then do by all means PM me, and I will be pleased to help with any such claims, using the same methods as I did for my own claim, including putting the same questions to npower as I did.

Edit – please also see supplemental post #1337

DirectDebacle

Well done Sterling. Excellent outcome. It has taken a long time and a lot of hard work by many on this thread to get to this stage. At last npower are prepared to make more meaningful payments with a tad less resistance. I do hope that there are still many more 'victims' that have been holding back and will now be encouraged by this good news to pursue their claims.

janequeenie

not sure if this is the correct place to post but it seems to follow on from what people are saying about n power overcharging.
following a complete u turn from always being in credit on my gas and electricty i asked for my past invoices to see where things had changed in relation to my spend.
sure enough it was in august last year when they hiked their prices up a reported 26%. on checking my invoices though they put the price increase on at 28/6/2008 which meant they had overcharged me by a substancial amount.
on contacting n power they were rather blah-zay and suggested it was a clerical error.they then went on to have the audacity to ask why it had taken until now to spot it !!!
so i would suggest people check their past bills in relation to this price increase ( it was electricity).
i would also be interested to know if anybody else has had this as i find it hard to believe that a company with 6.8 million customers manually types in price increases for all customers.
should i be asking for compensation and for how much ?? bearing in mind i am all of a sudden £921 in arrears.

thanks

DirectDebacle

janequeenie wrote: »

not sure if this is the correct place to post but it seems to follow on from what people are saying about n power overcharging.........i find it hard to believe that a company with 6.8 million customers manually types in price increases for all customers.
thanks

Thank you for the post. This thread deals with a specific issue which relates to gas only. Your post raises some serious concerns and may be another example of wrongdoing by npower. If only 10% of their customers were affected by this at a cost of £15.00 each that is 680000 * £15.00. A lot of money.

I would suggest that you start a new thread on this one and post details of the bills you have which show the discrepancies (omit personal details). It may be that others have sufferred as you did and a thread to discuss the way forward would be a good start. In the meantime you should work out how much they overcharged you and lodge an initial complaint against them. You can then work out what they owe you in overcharges plus any compensation you feel you may be entitled to.

Good luck.

Grumpy4u

Well done Sterling!
I cannot match your impressive record but can now report my success. Having complained to npower and eventually received a £100 "good will" payment, I decided to move to e.on which came out top for me in two price-matching websites. I did it via a cashback website and everything went smoothly.

So now I am paying £66 per month rather than £78 AND I have been given a refund from npower of £289 AND I am soon to receive £65 cashback!

So I am very pleased as you can imagine and extremely grateful to you and DD and everyone else who supports people like me who feel they have been done down by npower.

Finally, I would urge all those who read this forum to follow my (and your) example. You have nothing to lose and you could end up quite a bit richer!!

Many thanks from a not-so Grumpy!!:T

fleur

I've been with npower for over a year and had a massive increase on my bill about 6 months ago. I'm with them for both gas & electricity. I've tryed to read through the examples given but totally lose the plot. Could someone please do some simple explanation for me? My bill increased by about £30 a month. I did phone and query it and was told it was due to the previous cold winter and to stop me getting into arrears.

Sterling

Hi Grumpy4u

Very many thanks for letting us know of your most satisfying result. I hope many others who have yet to receive payment from Npower will follow your sound example. The money is out there, just waiting to be claimed.

Well done.

Sterling

Hi Fleur

Welcome to the thread. Although you appear to be having a problem with npower, it does not appear that you would have been adversely affected by npower’s gas sculpting changes (the subject of this thread), as those happened before you became an npower customer.

I would therefore suggest that you start a new thread on this board, along the lines of what you have posted here, and I feel sure that there will be many knowledgeable posters who can offer you the help and guidance you require. They have certainly impressed me on previous occasions when I have read some of the answers to similar requests for help.

Good Luck

Jessica33

I had overlooked the original 4572 units at the "correct" price. But they still owe me £80 plus my time.

Sterling

Jessica33 wrote: »

I had overlooked the original 4572 units at the "correct" price. But they still owe me £80 plus my time.

I’m afraid you’ve lost me here. What you have said makes me wonder if you have calculated things correctly, because your claim should relate to the number of “excess” high tier units over and above 4572; so I don’t follow why you are costing 4572 units at “the correct rate” as you mention. That would appear to be irrelevant. Perhaps you would like to post your calculations on here so that we can check them out. I also don’t understand what you mean by “the correct rate”.

You might care to have a look at my post #1048 (page 53) that sets out my own method of calculations, as well as looking at DD’s method which can be accessed via the link in his signature. Both versions give the same result.

As you will have seen from my post #1327, the time you spend as a direct result of Npower’s shortcomings should form part of your claim, as indeed you mention; and I would advise you keep a record of time spent. It is surprising how much it mounts up. Needless to say, you need to inform npower accordingly; and I suspect that you will have to threaten court proceedings in the form of a “letter before action” in order to get your full claim including time spent.

You say that npower “still” owes you £80. I assume from this that you are therefore already in the process of claiming against npower. As a matter of interest, how are things proceeding?