NPower gas 'sculpting'

DirectDebacle

meggsy wrote: »

I have today received a letter from the Complaints team to my email of the 28th April !

Meggsy have a look at post #186. It is the letter I received from npower. compare it to yours and see if there are any discrepencies between them.

I like the sense of fairness they claim they have in your letter. Makes it all seem ok now, doesn't it.

meggsy

DirectDebacle wrote: »

Meggsy have a look at post #186. It is the letter I received from npower. compare it to yours and see if there are any discrepencies between them.

I like the sense of fairness they claim they have in your letter. Makes it all seem ok now, doesn't it.

Many thanks, I looked at your letter and thought I would type mine, after all it's such a lovely sunny day here and all is well in npowerland too :rolleyes:

"Following your recent contact into our Customer Service Centre, regarding your gas account, I am writing to assure you that the method we use to calculate your bill is correct.

In this instance we appreciate that the gas seasonally weighted billing is a somewhat complex issue and would like to take this opportunity to provide an explanation in detail of the method used to calculate your gas bills.

The reason that the bill you have queried shows a high number of units charged at the primary rate is because we introduced the seasonally weighted profile shown below from 1st November 2007. As most domestic gas use is in the winter months we seek to apply more of the primary units in those months to help ensure that we recover fixed costs. If we don't do this, customers who use little gas in the summer do not make a fair contribution towards their fixed costs and this leads to the unfair position where one group of customers effectively pay these costs for another group.

As you can see from the profile you can expect far fewer primary units being charged in the summer months and over the year from 1st November 2007 no more than the published total of 4572 will be charged.

Jan - 882 primary units
February - 882
March - 272
April - 271
May, June, July, August, September - 46 each month
October - 271
November - 882
December - 882
Total - 4572

Last year we suspended this way of billing primary units between 1st May 2007 and 31st October 2007 whilst we completed vital work on our gas billing systems. This meant that an equal number was charged each month and so more units were charged at the higher rate than normal in the summer period. This was taken into account when setting lower gas charges in April.

I trust my explanation of the way in which we calculate your bill is now clear. Should you require further assistance or wish to discuss this matter further please feel free to contact us ...... " Think I will pass on that one I am confused enough already :mad:

DirectDebacle

meggsy wrote: »

Many thanks, I looked at your letter and thought I would type mine, after all it's such a lovely sunny day here and all is well in npowerland too :rolleyes:
:mad:

Interesting. They have changed it and it is now much less detailed than the one they sent to me. No mention of 'tariff year' or re-setting it. I note they now say they introduced seasonally adjusted weighting on 1st November, 2007, not re-introduced. At least you got a letter from them. Not too many of us have. Hang on to it. It might be worth a few quid on Ebay. Could flog thousands of copies of it to npower customers who might need one for court lol.

colonelhall

Yup! It's the same letter that I got. Nice of them to "take this opportunity to provide an explanation in detail of the method used to calculate your gas bills." I would have thought that I'd made it abundantly clear that I understand their methods all too well.

If they knew in April that they would charge extra primary units from May, why did they continue offering contracts throughout this period which clearly stated 4572?

darkside_2

Not sure if this the correct place to post but here goes.

Today i recieved my first npower gas bill.

The total is £327.47 this includes a previous bill that i never recieved.

The period cover on the bill is 13/12/07 to 13/03/08 we are in the month of june.

Going with other peoples experience is this about right?

We pay roughly about £40 in electricity with npower as well for a 4 bed semi detached.

DirectDebacle

Welcome to the thread Darkside. Need a bit more information really. When did you join npower. Can you post details of both bills so they can be looked at separately. The details of the bill you didn't receive you can get from npower customer services. They can read it to you straight of their screen. Get all you can from them, meter readings, dates, high and low kWh charged for. With that info from both bills we will be able to check it. From 13/12/07-13/03/08 you should have been charged for around 2249 high rate units for those dates

DirectDebacle

Received notification from the County Court today that all of my claim would be defended.

darkside_2

DirectDebacle wrote: »

Welcome to the thread Darkside. Need a bit more information really. When did you join npower. Can you post details of both bills so they can be looked at separately. The details of the bill you didn't receive you can get from npower customer services. They can read it to you straight of their screen. Get all you can from them, meter readings, dates, high and low kWh charged for. With that info from both bills we will be able to check it. From 13/12/07-13/03/08 you should have been charged for around 2249 high rate units for those dates

Tried a few times with npower today to get last bill read to me but nothing.

We joined npower in August 07,

not really sure what your wanting from the second bill but hopefully this is it.

Charges for tariff - standard gas meter / payment on receipt

last reading 13/12/07 - 2392 - estimate this reading 04/01/08 - 2507 - estimate
gas used calorific value 39.973 115(cubic metres) = 1306 kwh
cost split first 626 at 4.412p next 680 at 1.915p
charges £27.62 & £13.02

last reading 04/01/08 - 2507 estimate this reading 13/03/08 - 2854 -estimate
gas used calorific value 39.736(cubic metres) = 3917 kWh
cost split first 1765 at 6.556p next 2152 at 1.990p
charges £115.71 & £42.82

cost of gas used this period £199.17
vat at 5% £9.95
gas charges this period £209.12
previous bill (this is the one we never got) £118.35
amount to pay by 20/06/08 £327.47

hope this is of some help to you.

DirectDebacle

Your bill has been calculated correctly and at the monthly high rate units shown in post #483.
Assuming you joined npower on 1st August 07 and npower do not change the monthly rates it will mean that by 31st July 08 (12 months) you will have been overcharged 736 high rate units. At your prices this =£33.56 +vat.

The reason is that from 1st May to 31st Oct 07 they were charging a flat rate of 381 for each of those months. You joined in the midst of it. Get all your bills and keep them safe so you can check after your year is up.npower may well change the rate for each month before then and so far they don't tell you when they have done it.

ABN

Had a phone call from Npower today asking why I was leaving (moving to Scottish Power fixed price 2011).

I explained that it was due to the overcharging brought about by the sculpting. She tried to defend it but became rather quiet once I mentioned the 7 month year. But she did go on to say that they have now dropped the sculpting due to customer complaints(whether that’s true or not I don’t know), then went on to say that they would ensure that the transfer went smoothly without making any attempt to persuade me to stay with them.

At least they know that they have lost at least one customer over this.