NPower gas 'sculpting'

Cardew

sofa-spud wrote: »

they cannot possibly show that a high user would pay less because of the introduction of sculpting alone. The effect from their intorduction of sculpting was that nobody would pay less, & some would pay more. This being the case they were required to notify customers of the change and give them the opportuninty to accept or go elsewhere.

I am all for getting 'even' with npower if at all possible.

Your statement is not technically correct. Someone joining npower in say April and leaving 6 months later will pay less than previously.

However their terms and conditions state that you will pay for 4,572 Tier1 units in a year and, apart from the issue of their suspension of seasonal weighting, that is the most you pay.

The Npower gas bills state on the back "how we calculate your bill" and that clearly explains how seasonal weighting works. i.e. 882 units Nov-to Feb, 272 March etc

DirectDebacle

Hi Spud,

To answer your queries.

You are correct that the two tier system was introduced on 1/4/2003 which is why I use 1/4-31/3 as the year for calculating bills.

From 1/4/2003-30/9/2004 the high rate units were charged at a flat rate of 381kWh per month.

On 1/10/2004 this flat rate method was changed to a seasonally adjusted (sculpted) rate. A percentage of the annual 4572 was allocated to each month of the year. You can see how the percentages were distributed here:

http://www.npower.com/web/At_home/customer_service/yourquestionsanswered/index.htm

The first table came in to use from 1/11/2007 and the second table was used from 1/10/2004-30/3/2007 on your tariff.

As Cardew and Kim have pointed out there is nothing wrong with 'sculpting' as long as the annual maximum of 4572 p.a. is not exceeded.

When npower introduced 'sculpting' on 1/10/2004 they also used this date to start a new Primary Block of 4572 for the year 1/10/2004-30/9/2005. Thus they charged 381 for the six months April to Sept and the following six months a higher rate than this which caused more than 4572 to be charged for the year 1/4/2004-31/3/2005. A similar change in May 2007 and November 2007 caused further overcharging.

It was not sculpting in itself that caused the problem it was npowers manipulation of the length of a year known as the 'tariff year' that was the cause.

Put simply these changes and the alteration to the length of a year were changes that should have been notified to customers but wern't. That is the breach of contract. You were never notified of these changes or even informed of their existence at the time you joined npower. Your claim is that npower have been in continuous breach of contract since you joined (subject to the 6 year rule)

To blow some of the smoke away from npowers 'tariff year' it is logical to use 1/4/2003-31/3/2004 et seq. The 4572 Primary Block is per annum so all subsequent Primary Block years will follow from the date of the very first one.

I have no idea what a court may find reasonable as an hourly rate and I can't comment as to what you should claim. If you are a surveyor and charge clients £90.00 per hour a court may find this excessive as you are a lay person. If you are a barrister/solicitor they may find the same hourly rate very reasonable. It boils down to what you feel is reasonable and that is what you should claim.

As far as the 6 year cut off point goes I am not sure. I would imagine it begins from the date the 'offence' took place and you have 6 years to lodge your claim with the court. The date of the offence is the date you joined npower as long as that is not more than 6 years ago. Perhaps someone else knows the answer. I found my local county court extremely helpful in advising on (non-legal) procedural matters. A phone call to your local court should clarify this for you. My court was unable to advise re hourly rate for costs. Yours may be more forthcoming.

The clock is now ticking on a daily basis.

Your figure of £95.60 is very close to my claim for the two periods of overcharging.

I am sorry the link to my claim is not working. I will see what I can do.

DirectDebacle

Hi Spud,

Before the issue of sculpting they sent me quarterly statements which contained the 4572 units/year divided equally across the period i.e. 4572*(number of days on statement/days in the year). From this they set the precendent of how the bill's were calculated

Correct.

My idea is to simply adopt their method to determine the amount of overcharge.

But to do this it has to be applied to the year 1/4-31/3. Therefore you have to apportion the high units on your bills accordingly.

For example a bill period from 19/3/2004- 10/4/2005 with a total of 5764kWh @ the high rate would have to be split as follows to show what was charged for 1/4/2004-31/3/2005

12 days in March@ 12.3kWh per day (381/31) = 148kWh

April- Sept flat rate @381 per month= 2286kWh

Add monthly rates as shown in the 2nd table given by npower Oct-March incl. = 3196kWh

Add 9 days in April = 9*14.93 per day (448.06/30) = 134kWh

Total on this bill 5764kWh.

Total for 1/4/2004-31/3/2005 = 5764-(148+134) = 5482.

Overcharge for year 1/4/2004-31/3/2005 = 5482-4572 = 910Kwh

Do a similar calculation for 1/4/2007 - 31/3/2008.

Note:

Figure for April 07 and previous months is as per Table 2.

They calculated high rate units at flat monthly rate May - Oct incl. @ 381 per month.

Table 1 was used from 1/11/07. beginning Nov, 07, 882kWh etc.

I would suggest you simply lodge a complaint with npower that since you joined them they have been in breach of contract and that you have been charged more than the contracted 4572 per annum. Ask them to explain and how much they owe you.

This is to save time and get your complaint lodged a.s.a.p. It will take a while for them to send you their letter of denial. You can spend this time working out the overcharges and your expenses etc which will form part of your claim and repy to their initial response.

I dont want to come across as being greedy, but I feel I have been well & truly shafted by them and want help ensure they suffer the consequences of their behaviour toward their customers. The only way I feel they will notice this is in the impact to their bank balance

Exactly the right attitude and couldn't have put it better myself.

sofa-spud

Cardew wrote: »

I am all for getting 'even' with npower if at all possible.

Your statement is not technically correct. Someone joining npower in say April and leaving 6 months later will pay less than previously.

Granted that a 6 month customer would experience a benefit I should have been explicit in that any existing customer would experience a negative impact.

However their terms and conditions state that you will pay for 4,572 Tier1 units in a year and, apart from the issue of their suspension of seasonal weighting, that is the most you pay.
The Npower gas bills state on the back "how we calculate your bill" and that clearly explains how seasonal weighting works. i.e. 882 units Nov-to Feb, 272 March etc

I have no problem paying for what I've used, based on what I've agreed to pay. The section on the back of the bills you mention did not (in my case) appear until the bill dated 24/11/08 and so I feel I was not notified until that reciept of that bill. Allowing for the 65 day notice clause I have thus used the bill up to & including 26/8/08.

sofa-spud

DirectDebacle wrote: »

From 1/4/2003-30/9/2004 the high rate units were charged at a flat rate of 381kWh per month.

On 1/10/2004 this flat rate method was changed to a seasonally adjusted (sculpted) rate. A percentage of the annual 4572 was allocated to each month of the year. You can see how the percentages were distributed here:

Unfortunately only the bill dated 15/5/06 aligns to those dates.
I would like to (if possible) keep to dates printed on the bills to avoid the possibility of them arguing about apportioning between dates not explicitly stated on the bills.
Sorry, but the link doesnt work, it takes me to the home page of the FAQ's, what was the search string you entered to get to the page? I should be able to find it from that. I searched on 'seasonal weighting' but that only brought up a single (current) table for my tariff.

When npower introduced 'sculpting' on 1/10/2004 they also used this date to start a new Primary Block of 4572 for the year 1/10/2004-30/9/2005. Thus they charged 381 for the six months April to Sept and the following six months a higher rate than this which caused more than 4572 to be charged for the year 1/4/2004-31/3/2005. A similar change in May 2007 and November 2007 caused further overcharging.

It was not sculpting in itself that caused the problem it was npowers manipulation of the length of a year known as the 'tariff year' that was the cause.

I agree this is the main reason it came to light, and it was wrong of them to do so. At the risk of wearing the patience of people, I am trying to canvass opinion on using the sculpting issue as a further cause for breach of contract. This is one of the complaints I have asked (at your suggestion) the Energy Ombudsman to see if they will investigate. The bottom line is that apportionment is not explicitly mentioned in the T&C's (it is only implied by precedent) but the yearly figure of 4572 is. If the Ombudsman & opinion says no then I would consider it foolish to pursue this side of the complaint.

I agree, but as stated
I have no idea what a court may find reasonable as an hourly rate and I
can't comment as to what you should claim. If you are a surveyor and charge clients £90.00 per hour a court may find this excessive as you are a lay person. If you are a barrister/solicitor they may find the same hourly rate very reasonable. It boils down to what you feel is reasonable and that is what you should claim.

You raise a very good point there, in this case I would certainly be considered a lay person. As such I would take a long time to prepare any case, but work cheaper as a result.

I found my local county court extremely helpful in advising on (non-legal) procedural matters. A phone call to your local court should clarify this for you. My court was unable to advise re hourly rate for costs. Yours may be more forthcoming.

To late! They've gone home! I'll give them a call first thing tomorrow.

The clock is now ticking on a daily basis.

I am sorry the link to my claim is not working. I will see what I can do.

to paraphrase Sir Ralph richardson, I need more time, and its running out!
Got the PM, thanks

sofa-spud

DirectDebacle wrote: »

But to do this it has to be applied to the year 1/4-31/3. Therefore you have to apportion the high units on your bills accordingly.

For example a bill period from 19/3/2004- 10/4/2005 with a total of 5764kWh @ the high rate would have to be split as follows to show what was charged for 1/4/2004-31/3/2005

I think the simplest thing at present is to post my actual billed figures:

From.......To.......... Date....days T1: T2: Price Price
............................................units units..T1 ..T2
19/08/03 14/11/03 14/11/03 87 1090 686 2.280 1.380
14/11/03 01/02/04 13/02/04 79 978 2431 2.280 1.380
01/02/04 13/02/04 13/02/04 12 164 469 2.650 1.380
13/02/04 13/05/04 13/05/04 90 1131 2060 2.650 1.380
Gross T1 units charged to me = 3363
Days in period covered = 268

13/05/04 17/05/04 13/08/04 4 49 109 2.650 1.380
17/05/04 13/08/04 13/08/04 88 891 0 2.650 1.380
13/08/04 01/10/04 08/11/04 49 602 0 2.650 1.380
01/10/04 08/11/04 08/11/04 38 451 628 2.980 1.550
08/11/04 07/02/05 07/02/05 91 1704 2788 2.980 1.550
07/02/05 12/05/05 13/05/05 94 1605 1075 2.980 1.550
Gross T1 units charged to me = 5302
Days in period covered = 364

12/05/05 31/05/05 05/08/05 19 198 247 2.980 1.550
31/05/05 05/08/05 05/08/05 66 319 252 2.980 1.550
05/08/05 04/11/05 05/11/05 91 618 522 2.980 1.550
04/11/05 01/01/06 14/02/06 58 1009 1160 2.980 1.550
01/01/06 14/02/06 14/02/06 44 911 1070 3.450 1.798
14/02/06 01/04/06 17/05/06 46 894 738 3.450 1.798
01/04/06 17/05/06 17/05/06 46 614 553 3.968 2.068
Gross T1 units charged to me = 4563
Days in period covered = 370

17/05/06 30/05/06 23/08/06 13 136 2563 3.968 2.068
30/05/06 22/08/06 23/08/06 84 190 0 3.968 2.068
22/08/06 01/10/06 11/11/06 40 234 241 3.968 2.068
01/10/06 11/11/06 11/11/06 41 498 610 4.412 2.492
11/11/06 13/02/07 13/02/07 94 1788 2592 4.412 2.492
13/02/07 30/04/07 11/05/07 76 1342 1470 4.412 2.492
30/04/07 11/05/07 11/05/07 11 134 150 4.412 1.915
Gross T1 units charged to me = 4322
Days in period covered = 359

11/05/07 02/08/07 02/08/07 83 918 0 4.412 1.915
02/08/07 30/09/07 13/11/07 59 724 0 4.412 1.915
30/09/07 10/11/07 13/11/07 41 557 609 4.412 1.915
10/11/07 04/01/08 25/02/08 55 1702 673 4.412 1.915
04/01/08 05/02/08 25/02/08 32 921 512 6.688 1.990
05/02/08 06/05/08 27/05/08 91 1282 1970 6.688 1.990
Gross T1 units charged to me = 6104
Days in period covered = 361

06/05/08 05/08/08 26/08/08 91 136 1055 6.688 1.990
Gross T1 units charged to me = 136
Days in period covered = 91

As you can see, no bill periods can be combined to make exactly 365 (or 366 as appropriate) so I have converted the yearly figure into that for the shorter/longer period by;
days in period/days in year*4572
As this uses equal weighting it results in a figure slightly less than if sculpting is applied because any missing (or additional) days at the start & end of each period are for the month of May and so I have allowed a higher number of KWH's per day than sculpting would. e.g.
For the period 11/5/07 to 6/5/08 there are 361 days in the period covered. As this period covers Feb 08 it is a leap year of 366 days, so;
361/366*4572 = 4510 KWH's (rounded)
by this I reckon I have been overcharged for
(6104-4510) = 1595 T1 units
I have been ignoring sculpting on the grounds (hope?) that it is a breach of contract. So I allow 12.5 KWH's/day for May (387 KWH's/month) which, if sculpting were applied to this example, would result in a (slightly) greater overcharge.

I would suggest you simply lodge a complaint with npower that since you joined them they have been in breach of contract and that you have been charged more than the contracted 4572 per annum. Ask them to explain and how much they owe you.

This is to save time and get your complaint lodged a.s.a.p. It will take a while for them to send you their letter of denial. You can spend this time working out the overcharges and your expenses etc which will form part of your claim and repy to their initial response.

Good advice & I will get the letter sent Rec'd tomorrow. In the meantime I will (no doubt with help:D) finally arrive at a set of figures for my claim.

Finally whats people's opinion on including the 2 other matters?
These are;
1/
That they failed to apply the correct Dual Fuel/DD discount to my account last accounting year. I already raised this with them by phone and was told (surprise!) that it was correct.
2/
They incorrectly recorded payments received from me (decimal point in the wrong place!)

these 2 issues alone amount to £90.50p. Should I include these or raise them seperately (and deny them the opportunity to cause confusion)?

DirectDebacle

Try this link http://www.npower.com/web/At_home/customer_service/yourquestionsanswered/index.htm

If it just takes you to the main FAQ page then use the 'refine your search' drop down box, select billing and then you will see a FAQ 'How are my bills calculated'.

13/02/04 13/05/04 1131 2060 2.650 1.380
13/05/04 17/05/04 109 2.650 1.380
17/05/04 13/08/04 891 2.650 1.380
13/08/04 01/10/04 602 2.650 1.380
01/10/04 08/11/04 451 628 2.980 1.550
08/11/04 07/02/05 1704 2788 2.980 1.550
07/02/05 12/05/05 1605 1075 2.980 1.550

Total T1 units for this period 6493

Units for 1/4/04-13/5/05 are
April 381
May 13*12.29 (381/31) = (159.770) 160kWh

Add T1 units as billed until final bill. To work out T1 units up to 31/3/05

April rate is 448.06
May 12 days @ 10.47 per day = (125.65) 126kWh

448+126 = 574

Therefore last bill T1 units (7/2/05-31/3/05) =

1605-574 = 1031

Total T.1 units for 1/4/2004-31/3/2005 (365 days) is 5329
Overcharge is 5329-4572 = 757kWh

Cost 757*1.43p = £11.37 incl VAT.

Not a fortune but ok for npower when *2m.

As you can se you only have to apportion the first bill and the last bill over a '12 month' billing period to obtain a true 365 day figure.

I have been ignoring sculpting on the grounds (hope?) that it is a breach of contract. So I allow 12.5 KWH's/day for May (387 KWH's/month) which, if sculpting were applied to this example, would result in a (slightly) greater overcharge.

As has been said sculpting in itself is not illegal and not a breach of contact. It did not even require any notification to customers.

If either of the two profiles on npowers site are allowed to run for a full 12 months then 4572 will not be exceeded.

As I have explained 1/4-31/3 should be the months used for the 4572 year.

It was because on 1/10/04 npower changed from a flat (381 per month) profile to a 'sculpted profile' that caused the overcharge for 1/4/04-31/3/05.

It was this change that should have been notified that wasn't and that is where the alleged breach occurs.

npower claimed that they were not required to notify as they started a new 'tariff year' on 1/10/05, and thus they started a new block of 4572 which would not have been exceeded by 30/9/06.

That is why it is important to stick to a set year of 1/4-31/3 and apportioning bills to those dates. It greatly assists in clearing away the confusion that npower deliberately introduced to the system.

The two other disputes you have with npower are separate and need to be kept separate. Issue a separate claim in respect of each of them.

sofa-spud

DirectDebacle wrote: »

Try this link
If it just takes you to the main FAQ page then use the 'refine your search' drop down box, select billing and then you will see a FAQ 'How are my bills calculated'.

I'm afraid I still see the same as last time. The page contains 2 tables, the first being the current weighting, the other relates to Tracker & fixed price 2009 weightings:o
Are these the tables as posted in post 1006(page51)? sorry as a new member the site will not allow me to include links:(

If so I will spend the next few days to come up with some figures and post back.

That is why it is important to stick to a set year of 1/4-31/3 and apportioning bills to those dates. It greatly assists in clearing away the confusion that npower deliberately introduced to the system.

The two other disputes you have with npower are separate and need to be kept separate. Issue a separate claim in respect of each of them.

I'll use your example and see what figures I arrive at.
Meantime the initial letter(s) are written and will be sent tomorrow. A call to the court to confirm the cut off dates for action, then I might even find time to spend a day or 2 in gainful employment:p

Thanks again for everyones help & opinion

W_s_n

Hi there, i've been following this thread for a while, but not had the time to look it into this.

I've requested my bills from the date that I joined them, so will try to make some sense of it all.

DirectDebacle

The page contains 2 tables, the first being the current weighting, the other relates to Tracker & fixed price 2009 weightings:o

Yes you have the correct tables. The Tracker & Fixed price table (I referred to it as Table 2 in my previous posts) are the same figures that were used from 1/10/2004 to 30/4/2007. Apologies if I caused you some confusion.

The table and worked example on p51 is the one you use for calculating the 2007/8 'sculpt'.