NPower gas 'sculpting'

Anne3333

:T Yes, well done DirectDebacle, the world needs a few more brave souls that are prepared to take on The Big Boys. We are proud of you!

DirectDebacle

Thank you all so much for your kind words and support. I very much doubt I would have got as far as I did without this thread. I do hope others will resist the temptation of 'goodwill' payments and pursue this avaricious and unrepentant organisation for what they have been overcharged and a bit more on top.

As for the future, I hope this is not the end of it and Ofgem will do a thorough investigation resulting in a punitive fine, compensation for all victims and a root and branch overhaul of the energy industries unfair and overcomplicated pricing structures.

Cardew is correct (he knows how much I hate saying that, but he is;) ) this has been a brilliant thread.

Good luck to you all.:A

DD

backfoot

That's it DD. Having followed your journey ,which like mine involved this unscrupulous organisation,I am left with the feeling that we are totally left out in the cold by our so called Regulators.

There is such an obvious,easy to follow, scam yet it took a single minded individual to take them to task rather than the people actually paid to do this for us.

Time and time again,Ofgem,Energywatch and now Consumer focus sit idly by not showing any appetite for the fight and the rights of ordinary people.They should be totally ashamed of themselves as much as NP should.Their continued denial is pitiful.

Your actions have been inspiring to many.:T :beer:

DirectDebacle

Below is an email I sent to Steve Webb, the Lib. Dem. MP who expressed an interest in this matter.

I refer you to my email of 17/10/2008. I realise how busy MP’s are and that I have not given you much time to respond. I understand you are shortly to contact Ofgem with regard to asking them to consider widening the scope of their current investigation into an allegation of billing irregularities by npower. As highlighted by an article in the Times it would appear that this alleged billing irregularity goes back to April, 2003, much further than May, 2007, as originally thought.

There is an aspect of this matter that was not mentioned in the Times and was not part of my claim against npower. I believe this should be looked into and that it is more suited to a law enforcement agency than Ofgem.
After you have considered my points no doubt you will be in a position to decide. The facts as I know them are as follows.

Npower have consistently denied any wrongdoing with respect to overcharging. They have given two main reasons as to why this is the case.

The first is that they operated a ‘tariff’ year which allowed them to make a year to be of any number of months that suited them.

The second is that they raised the number of Primary Block units, chargeable over a year above the contracted 4572, because they were changing billing systems. This change (to the Primary block units) took place on 1st May, 2007. They further say they realised that an overcharge would occur. In order to compensate for this they simultaneously reduced the price of the Follow-On units and increased their dual fuel and direct debit discounts.

These two reasons have been repeated by npower on many occasions both privately to me, in correspondence, and also to the public at large in statements made to the press. Leaving aside the disputed validity of these excuses there are other facts to consider.

Around 12th February, 2007, British Gas announced and advertised to the general public, a price reduction for gas which would be effective from 12th March, 2007.

Around 19th February, 2007, in response to this, npower announced their own gas price reduction in the press and claimed that from the end of April, 2007, they would still be cheaper than British Gas. (British Gas complained about the wording of this advertisement to the ASA, which subsequently upheld the complaint).

It is worthy of note that the advertisement by npower did not contain any information that the price reduction was only applied to the Follow-On rate. Neither did it mention that the price change was enforced because of technical reasons due to the change in billing systems.

The main omission in the advertisement was that npower were at the same time increasing the number of Primary Block units they were going to charge. This would have the effect of nullifying any benefit from the price reduction. In turn this made their price comparison with British Gas most misleading. In other words they announced they were reducing their prices but in actual fact they were altering their pricing structure in a way to make virtually no difference to the price customers were charged for their gas.

Other than a price reduction no information on these changes were made either to the public or existing gas customers of npower.

It seems to me that this was an act of deception practiced upon British Gas, existing npower customers and on U.K. gas customers in general.

Npower cannot have it both ways. Either they reduced their prices as an attempt to compensate existing customers for raising the number of Primary Block units or it was a direct marketing drive to attract new (British Gas in the main) customers.

My view is that if npower wished to compensate existing customers for having to alter the Primary Block units for technical reasons, then there was much simpler and fairer ways of achieving this. There would have been no reason not to inform customers or indeed Ofgem that this was their intention. Such action would have probably avoided the difficulties they now find themselves in.

There is little doubt that what they have done cannot be attributed to a mistake, billing error or technical issue. It was a calculated commercial decision exploiting a lack of clarity and information in their terms and conditions. They deliberately withheld this information from their customers since 1st April, 2003. They first exploited this unfair advantage on 1st October, 2004. On this occasion they increased the amount of Primary Block units over the contracted maximum without informing customers. This increase was ‘lost’ within a price increase and the onset of winter (and therefore higher bills). Npower would hope that the cost of the extra Primary Block units would go unnoticed because of the price change and seasonally higher bills. I am sure their hope was realised. This success would have been the inspiration for their similar conduct in April, 2007.

British Gas was the victim of a false and misleading advertisement specifically targeted to attract their customers to npower. No doubt they suffered a loss of income as a result of their customers believing npowers’ advertisement and switching to npower.

Any British Gas customers switching to npower as a result of this advertisement were also deceived. On 1st November, 2007 npower again raised the amount of Primary block units to be charged over the remainder of the year (to 31st March, 2008). This ensured any new customers joining them between the months of April 2007 and September 2007 would also be overcharged by the year end of 31st March, 2008.

Similarly npowers existing customers suffered even more overcharging.

I may be wrong and npower may have a perfectly good reason to account for their actions, but this can only be shown if a thorough investigation is mounted.

I hope you will bring this to the attention of the appropriate authority.

I look forward to your reply.

colonelhall

To my shame, I cashed my paltry cheque from Npower, gave up on continuing the correspondence with them and decided that it was time to move on. My reason was that the money was not the issue. I was looking for a concerted response from the media. As this did not happen, I gave up.
Reading the Times this week, I see that DD has got a right result and I want to forward my thanks to him for having stuck to his guns. I am full of admiration for those who keep going like this and end up giving those unprincipled organisations a good kick in the shins. I only hope that the media can pick up on this and aim a bigger kick a bit higher up!
I found the letter to the M.P. very interesting. I had made the same point to Ofgem and in some of my letters to the press. I think that I even contacted some of the rival energy firms. However, nobody seemed to pick up on it. DD is far more articulate and persistent and I hope that his letter has some effect.
Well done and many thanks.

meggsy

There are only five comments showing on the Times coverage of DD's story at the moment, so let's add to them

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilities/article4965377.ece

DirectDebacle

colonelhall wrote: »

However, nobody seemed to pick up on it.

Good to hear from you again colonel. Please don't apologise. It was you that started this thread and got the ball rolling. So well done to you. Began in March and on the way to 32000 hits. Around 4000 hits a month colonel, you did a good thing.

As for others picking up on it, I know what you mean. Most surprising is MSE himself. He could have pushed this into the limelight. I never received a response from him or his assistants. They haven't even flagged up this minor success. Too many 2 for 1 Pizzas to shift I suppose.

Lets hope the MP does what he stated in the paper. If I receive a response to my email I will let the thread know.

Perhaps others would consider similar emails to him [EMAIL="steve@stevewebb.org.uk"]steve@stevewebb.org.uk[/EMAIL]

npower-victim_3

backfoot wrote: »

Time and time again,Ofgem,Energywatch and now Consumer focus sit idly by not showing any appetite for the fight and the rights of ordinary people.They should be totally ashamed of themselves as much as NP should.Their continued denial is pitiful.

On Saturday I got two letters. One was a Final Reminder from npower, which included the wonderful non-sequitur: "We may appoint a Debt Collection Agency to call at your property, and this may lead to court proceedings". In that case they should be more careful who they call on.

The second was from Consumer Focus, revising what they told me on the phone: "I feel there may be some confusion... Consumer Focus are [sic] a campaigning organisation and do not deal with complaints in the same way as energywatch did. Your case with energywatch was closed prior to 30 September".

(Thanks for telling me, Energywatch - maybe you need something on your website, if you can't be bothered to contact people with open cases individually).

"The Energy Ombudsman was set up to take on complaints in the energy supply industry ... and are able to make binding decisions on the supply companies."

So later this week I'll be contacting the Energy Ombudsman to see if they'll take on my case. Several energy companies became members of the scheme on 1st October (funny that) and most of the rest on 1st April/Sept this year. And their website says they can't handle: "complaints about an energy company which joined the service on or after 1 October 2008, where the problem happened before this date" (but npower is one of the small number of companies that have apparently been members since July 2007) and also: "problems that are already being dealt with by courts or other complaints procedures" which might transpire to include the energywatch complaint to OFGEM.

There's also the small matter that I don't have any evidence of "deadlock" with npower, just a number of fruitless telephone calls, and a standard letter from npower answering the wrong questions. Maybe they'll take the referral and acceptance by Energywatch as evidence of deadlock.

ps There may be people with other types of complaint with other power companies that have just fallen through a crack as a result of the non-overlap of jurisdiction at the end of September. But that's a matter for another discussion.

DirectDebacle

npower-victim wrote: »

So later this week I'll be contacting the Energy Ombudsman to see if they'll take on my case.
There's also the small matter that I don't have any evidence of "deadlock" with npower, just a number of fruitless telephone calls, and a standard letter from npower answering the wrong questions. Maybe they'll take the referral and acceptance by Energywatch as evidence of deadlock.

Unless the Ombudsman has had their remit broadened your claim will almost certainly be in deadlock. What exactly is the nature of your claim? Is it the whole of the outstanding bill or just the amount you calculate you have been overcharged. If the latter I suggest you write to npower and offer them the amount you calculate to be correct, as full and final payment. Enclose a cheque for this amount. If they encash the cheque and write to you that they want the balance then tough. They will have entered into a contract accepting your offer. If they refuse then my previous advice still stands.

npower-victim_3

DirectDebacle wrote: »

Unless the Ombudsman has had their remit broadened your claim will almost certainly be in deadlock. What exactly is the nature of your claim? Is it the whole of the outstanding bill or just the amount you calculate you have been overcharged. If the latter I suggest you write to npower and offer them the amount you calculate to be correct, as full and final payment. Enclose a cheque for this amount. If they encash the cheque and write to you that they want the balance then tough. They will have entered into a contract accepting your offer. If they refuse then my previous advice still stands.

I'm not as sure as you appear to be that the "full and final" payment offer is watertight. But let's not get distracted by that. I have a final bill from when I changed my gas away from npower, which takes the annual number of units at the higher rate way above the 4,700 (whatever) they originally contracted. I have been refusing to pay until they re-bill me with the "correct" amount of gas at the two price bands.

I asked Consumer Focus if I should recalculate and pay an 'undisputed' amount, but they did not answer that question when they wrote to me. I was going to ask the Energy Ombudsman the same question. However, my experience of other Ombudsman claims is that the entire bill is frozen until the matter is adjudicated, and that if the dispute is accepted as a case by the Ombudsman then npower is should suspend their 'collection' activities (as it was between my complaint being accepted by energywatch, and the recent incident where energywatch have apparently in effect, by default, found in favour of the energy companies for every unresolved complaint at the end of September!)