NPower gas 'sculpting'

Cardew

BenNevis wrote: »

Either you accept the tariff year or you don’t. If you accept it then my post 1566 raises a question which you can’t answer and your logic collapses like a house of cards.

Not wanting to get too involved in a semantic argument, but I suggest it is your logic that is flawed.

For instance I accept that Argentina have a claim to the Falkland Islands, however I don't accept that it is a valid claim.

Npower use the term 'tariff year' for a billing period of less than 12 months. It is perfectly reasonable for all parties to use that term in any discussion, without it being construed that Npower's opponents accept it is a valid concept.

sofa-spud

BenNevis wrote: »

Or you can claim that the tariff year was a fake idea. The trouble here is that you’re using this fake idea to back up your own whacky invention of the same year start for all claims. You then pompously hold this out as superior to that negotiated by Consumer Focus but when someone comes along and shows your logic is flawed you try and bluff your way out instead of taking it on board and dealing with it.

It was npower who created the notion of 'tariff year' or 'billing cycle' or 'method of allocation' at various times to try to weasel out of claims made against them.

Now they are at the point of having to repay customers, they are introducing the aniversary date of the customers joining them to try and minimise their payout. As npower have used these different points in their defence(s) it is reasonable to feel they have set a precedent. By the same reasoning it is reasonable for an agrieved customer to use any of these dates to maximise their claim against npower.
Both DD & myself used the anniversary of the introduction of the 2 tier pricing system as the date to determine our losses in our claims.

As DD has been trying to highlight, anyone inclined to work out their figures for the different dates will find their loss will vary according to the anniversary date chosen.

DirectDebacle

BenNevis wrote: »

Now you’re saying you never accepted the tariff year.

Either you accept the tariff year or you don’t. If you accept it then my post 1566 raises a question which you can’t answer and your logic collapses like a house of cards.

You can’t use fake ideas to support your own flawed logic matey. Get real.

In post #1561 I advised you to read the thread. If you had then you would have seen post #46, my very first post on this thread. In that post I challenged the validity of the tariff year. I have never wavered from that path and continue to do so.

If you had bothered to read further then you would have found another of my posts was to examine the consequences of the tariff year as if it were valid. A theory you are anxious to prove.

Using npowers definition of the tariff year there would have been four of them applied to my account.

These were:

The 18 month tariff year 1/4/03 - 30/9/04
The 31 month tariff 1/10/04 - 30/9/07
The 6 month tariff year 1/5/07 - 1/11/07
The current tariff year commencing 1/11/07.

(Around August 08 npower re-defined a year as any continuous period of 12 months for P.B. purposes.)

The last two would have not exceeded 4572 for those tariff years.

You might think this is game, set and match to you.

However the first two would have produced together 19646 P.B. units. A total of 10802 units over the 9144 they were entitled to charge at the P.B. rate.

Far in excess of the combined effect of the latter changes that are now being re-imbursed. Had I accepted the tariff year as valid then my claim would have been for 10802 wrongly charged units and not the 1980 approx I actually claimed.

I do not agree with you that my logic is flawed.

It appears to me that you have no interest in making any useful contribution to this thread. If you had then you would have taken the trouble to ensure you knew what you were talking about.

Instead you have used your own peverse interpretation of my posts and sentences taken out of context, to re-inforce your fallacious argument.

I am unsure what your objective is but it does not seem related to this thread which, in case you didn't realise, is to help customers have their overpayments returned to them, in full.

I am not going to waste any more of my time in responding to your pointless posts.

BenNevis

Here is a quote that gets it exactly right

davidgmmafan wrote: »

As discussed earlier (or was it another thread) if the method or the amount is flawed then this is because it is a compromize. If Consumer Focus felt, for the sake of argument, the true refund value was £90 million then they would have to decide do they dig in for a lengthy legal battle or take the offer of £70 million or so on the table now.

Given the looming demise of Consumer Focus it is probably a good job they went for option 2! Remember there will be a lot of people who knew nothing about this who are getting a payment they wouldn't otherwise have gotten.

Here is a quote that is rubbish

DirectDebacle wrote: »

You need to appreciate that the price change on 1/5/07 caused a new P.B. of 4572 per annum to commence.

DirectDebacle, the settlement negotiated by Consumer Focus took a long time and if you put your brain into gear you’d soon realise that your prattling on about a single price rise on 04/01/08 is just the tip of a very large iceberg.

There’s roughly 2 million customers involved all on a vast range of different 2 tier tariffs and all at different prices. Different regions have different prices for the same tariffs and worse still people change tariffs during their year as new tariffs become available and their prices change at that point as well.

Even if you took the same year start date for all of 1/5/07 it doesn’t take much thought to realise that npower would prefer to negotiate a statistical average set of prices to be applied across the board over that year. Fixing that statistical average can be done in a number of different ways each giving a different answer. This is probably why the negotiations took so long. You must also appreciate that npower would never agree to your idea of cherry picking the most advantageous year start.

Your whole approach to this has been almost childlike. Your logic doesn’t stand up to scrutiny just accept it matey. It’s no good trying to bludgeon me or anyone else into agreeing with you when you are just plain wrong.

backfoot

I get suspicious when I see posts like this. Putting aside the rights and wrongs of this particular issue, why has someone with apparently no prior involvement in this issue become so animated towards another consistently respected poster.

DD has been the Customer Champion of gas sculpting versus the might of the Big Utility. I don't feel he deserves to be spoken to in the tone of the last few posts.

Perhaps some anomisity has built up by being involved in this issue from the other side, or as an intermediary or someone with a score to settle?

The attack has gathered momentum and aggression very quickly

DirectDebacle

BenNevis wrote: »

Here is a quote that gets it exactly right
Here is a quote that is rubbish


DirectDebacle, the settlement negotiated by Consumer Focus took a long time and if you put your brain into gear you’d soon realise that your prattling on about a single price rise on 04/01/08 is just the tip of a very large iceberg.

There’s roughly 2 million customers involved all on a vast range of different 2 tier tariffs and all at different prices. Different regions have different prices for the same tariffs and worse still people change tariffs during their year as new tariffs become available and their prices change at that point as well.

Even if you took the same year start date for all of 1/5/07 it doesn’t take much thought to realise that npower would prefer to negotiate a statistical average set of prices to be applied across the board over that year. Fixing that statistical average can be done in a number of different ways each giving a different answer. This is probably why the negotiations took so long. You must also appreciate that npower would never agree to your idea of cherry picking the most advantageous year start.

Your whole approach to this has been almost childlike. Your logic doesn’t stand up to scrutiny just accept it matey. It’s no good trying to bludgeon me or anyone else into agreeing with you when you are just plain wrong.

Now you have moved the goalposts you are beginning to make some sensible points.

The first post you quote refers back to post #1502 with which I would assume you would, on the whole, agree with.

You will note that post 1502 acknowledges the possible difficulties Consumer Focus faced in agreeing a deal with npower.

The second quote you refer to as rubbish is merely a paraphrase of a statement made by npower. I applied it to one of several dates that were applicable. Again you took it out of context.

Your obsession with the date 1/5/07 is irrational and you have read into it a meaning that was neither implied nor intended.

I did not put it forward as anything other than a suggestion that it would probably have produced a higher average payment to customers than the one agreed upon. Further I recognised that it was not ideal and made it clear in that and several subsequent posts.

I invited you to come up with an alternative date to 1/5/07. At that point you could have posted in a similar fashion as you now have. You chose not to.

Instead you continued with your futile quest to show I was inconsistent in my view of the tariff year. The purpose of which still remains a mystery to me.

I do not disagree with some of your points regarding the difficulties calculating the refund for individual customers. However whatever these difficulties are of npowers making and should be resolved by them in a way that is not disadvantageous to customers.

Nevertheless customers have been presented with a fait accompli and we are where we are.

By using an individuals anniversary date there will be customers who are under compensated. Should any customer so affected be minded to press npower for the actual amount they were overcharged then I would support such action. The reality is that these are likely to be few and far between.

npower have engineered overpayments from customers and when confronted have tried to wriggle out of it like a rat in a trap. Finally cornered by Consumer Focus they appear to have found a way to yet again deprive customers of that which is rightfully theirs.

As a matter of principle I cannot agree with that but understand why it has been resolved in the way that it has.

Throughout our exchanges I would suggest it is you that has been wielding the bludgeon.

Terrylw1

Something I would like to point out.

It is not difficult to review a set of billing periods, consumptions and changes to unit prices, settlement quarters etc.

You just retrieve all the data from your systems, get it into Ms Excel or Access and then divide it up into the portions that should be calculated. It's just pots of data and sums. They could have even gone the whole customer friendly way to send out a "how we worked out your overpayment" section...if they did a mail merge.

Supplier staff do this on an individual basis every day going back over multiple product changes, missed meter changes, etc.

Averages can be weighted in favour of certain factors. There would be no need for them to do this unless they were looking to conceal something.

Really, it's not that hard to do from a mass point of view. This industry is quite complex in terms of forecasting, so they do much bigger more problematic calculations to deal with this side.

If ther was a need for offer a "settlement" to CF, then why are customer receiving different levels of overpayment refund? To work out it was different, they must have done enough calculations to understand what the real figure is, hence why bother offering a settlement? What is now coming to light is that they owe more than the £70m so what data was presented to CF? Can anyone remember CF publicly stating they were accepting a part settlement?

CF statement:

In 2007 npower changed the way it applied its charges for the first block of higher-priced gas units which households pay, but this change was not communicated effectively to customers. An estimated 1.8 million customers are likely to have paid for more of these higher-priced units than they expected to pay.

npower has thoroughly reviewed its customers' billing records, working closely with Consumer Focus, to ensure a fair amount is to be paid back which covers the additional charges made in 2007.

DirectDebacle

Terrylw1 wrote: »

Something I would like to point out.

It is not difficult to review a set of billing periods, consumptions and changes to unit prices, settlement quarters etc.

You just retrieve all the data from your systems, get it into Ms Excel or Access and then divid it up into the portions that should be calculated. It's just pots of data and sums.

Quite right. During my claim they sent me a comparison table listing all my billing details from 1/4/03 - 1/4/08.

One table showed the actual amounts charged and paid for. The other showed what those bills would have been charged as if there had been no seasonal weighting applied and charged at 381kWh per month throughout.

They calculated I had paid £81.01 more than I should. Nearly all of it in 07/08.

If they did the same in this case I suspect the number was too scary for them to show it to C.F. so presented them with a different calculation.

In fact Ofgem requested several tables from npower forecasting their effect of the two changes in 2007 and forecasts without the changes. Date ranges were from 1/10/06 and beyond 1/11/07 and included several different scenarios. Ofgem edited out all the information contained in these tables before sending them to me.

janequeenie

i have recieved a refund for £44 from npower without any explanation of how this figure was generated.being a cynical person i have formulated a rather elaborate spreadsheet as i took it as challenge to understand there rather complex pricing/unit structure and my calculations show i should be getting £102.32 refund.in addition to this it has highlighted that they also round up costs and also i have found errors on their conversions from cu to kwh, oh and there systems must also have forgotten to give me my yearly dual fuel discount last december.surely a computer system doesnt forget, does it !! i thought a computer system was programmed to do WHAT YOU TELL IT.

p.s not one error in my favour !!


come on npower with 6.3 million customers all these little and big mistakes add up to big money.

i just looked up the definition of fraud

deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain

maybe we should get the serious fraud office to investigate as i dont buy all these mistakes.

DirectDebacle

janequeenie wrote: »

maybe we should get the serious fraud office to investigate as i dont buy all these mistakes.

An npower spokesperson said,

"We are accountable to Ofgem who apply a much more rigourous regime than the S.F.O. Ofgem investigate us constantly and almost always find us to be mainly innocent",

adding,

"The mistakes are actually optional extras which come included at additional cost. Customers automatically buy them when they choose npower. They can opt out by choosing another supplier but will not receive the same standard of service that npower offer"