NPower gas 'sculpting'

Terrylw1

sofa-spud wrote: »

I think this is happening more often than people realise, in particular for those of us that are low users, or use little or no gas in a given period(i.e. Summer).

The simple solution is to give them online meter readings every month. Even if your not on their 'online' tariffs you can still do this using your account number. Simple to then check each bill to see if they have grouped any of these periods into a single figure of charging on the bill, if so its likely an overcharge has occurred.

Too much trouble/inconvienience to do this?

I agree, so I am no longer a customer of theirs:D

Sadly, they will just enter them and not use them unless it's time to bill. They will get used in calculations of estimates though.

So even then you would end up having to check it all yourself.

DirectDebacle

retired_cricketer wrote: »

I've not heard from npower yet.Do we know how far they have got with the 1.8m refunds ?
Thank you

I submitted my enquiry form a couple of weeks ago and received an auto response that it could take up to 28 days for an answer.

As far as I can tell from MSE posts, about 20.

They did say that all overcharged customers will have received their payments by the end of November, so do appear to be on target.:D

meggsy

I was disappointed to read this on the npower site today ..

"Why have you based this calculation on my anniversary date rather than a calendar year?

This was agreed with Consumer Focus to be the fairest and most logical approach"

I'm pretty sure this has been added to the site as I don't recall seeing it previously and it isn't included in the letter they send or the 'your payment explained' leaflet

http://www.npower.com/web/PaymentstoGasCustomers/index.htm

DirectDebacle

meggsy wrote: »

"Why have you based this calculation on my anniversary date rather than a calendar year?

This was agreed with Consumer Focus to be the fairest and most logical approach"

For who?

A fairer and more logical date would be 1/5/2007.

The fairest and most logical approach is to simply refund the exact amount each customer overpaid.

They have created a lottery where there can be no winners. If every customer is refunded exactly what they overpaid it simply means they have lost nothing. It also means npower have gained nothing.

BenNevis

DirectDebacle wrote: »

A fairer and more logical date would be 1/5/2007.

Why? Can you please explain.

DirectDebacle

BenNevis wrote: »

Why? Can you please explain.

Because all customers were billed up to 30/4/07 as their was a price change from 30/4/07.

Customers were then billed from 30/4/07 to 4/1/08 as there was another price change.

Therefore npower already know the amount of Primary Block (P.B) units each customer was charged from 1/5/07 -4/1/07.

From 1/5/07 the maximum 4572 would have been reached around 19/1/08. This was well after the price change so there is only one price differential to consider.

The only customers to fall out of these dates would be those who were with npower prior to 1/5/07 and left within the 1/5/07-30/4/08 period.

IMO a fairer, but not the fairest method.

BenNevis

Sorry just don’t get this at all. I can follow you when you said, “The fairest and most logical approach is to simply refund the exact amount each customer overpaid.” That I can understand but you then recommend using the same year for everyone in spite of of how many units they were actually overcharged meaning that some people would loose out by quite a bit.

I agree with you npower would know the “amount of Primary Block (P.B) units each customer was charged from 1/5/07 -4/1/07” but so what. For sure npower can work that out for a year beginning on any date it’s their system after all.

You mentioned price changes well npower does have a computer so they don’t have to put everyone into the same year just to keep to one set of prices. At any rate prices vary from region to region on the many different tariffs and again you’d have to take an average and some people would loose out again.

Seems to me that if your proposal of using the same year for everyone had been followed you’d have just as many people complaining on this site that they’d been diddled by that arrangement.

Sorry don’t follow your logic.

meggsy

Hi BenNevis

Maybe the second part of the article from The Times last Saturday will help

Post #55

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/...4#post37782144

Terrylw1

You have to use the customers start date & anniversary date which forces a cut off point for the tier 1 to have ended by. However, Npower's "reset" of the primary block actually forced a false anniversary date at 30/04/2007.

So, all they need to do is work out between the dates all this happened how many tier 1's you were charged and then work out how many you should have been charged. Then deduct the tier 2 price from thew overpayed tier 1 and refund it.

To add some balance to this, everytime Npower changed it's pricing structure years ago they used to create new tariff versions in elec. This was a standard change for all...well before the days of customers monitoring their tariffs. Now, a lot of those customers had active billing disputes where their reads were very wrong. Once the investigation was done, it meant they had to calculate the bills on either side and recalculate parts or all of tier 1 in the process. They used to do that successfully (and it's not difficult) so why so hard for gas? These changes had occurred midstream in tier 1...so if they can easy do it then, why not now?

Simple answer is, consumers are finding this confusing so are not sure what they are entitled to. Npower are clearly capitalising on this.

BenNevis

meggsy wrote: »

Hi BenNevis

Maybe the second part of the article from The Times last Saturday will help

Post #55

Thanks but I’m afraid that’s no help at all.

In that part of the article I see that the year used began on 1st March 2007 and the excess units were 2,333. Ok but what’s that to do with having everyone’s year begin on 1st May 2007 as recommended by DirectDebacle.

Where’s the wording in that article to explain why the same year for all would be better?