NPower gas 'sculpting'

RM5_2

There is not much we can do against sculpting itself, since the tariff only states the annual number of primary units and not the monthly one. So in principle they could, for customers that have been with them for more than a year, adjust each bill that if the customer has consumed X units in the previous year, he pays min(X,4572) units at the higher rate.

In fact, with either of the annual weighting schemes it is quite difficult to end up paying less that min(X,4572) units over a year, because they will base the estimated meter readings on the same annual weighting as the sculpting.
The only way to pay less would be if your consumption profile differs significantly from the sculpting profile and you make that known by supplying frequent meter readings. For instance, a customer with solar hot water consuming no gas from may to september and providing meter readings to prove this would pay 79.7%*min(X,4572) primary units with the old sculpting and 95%*min(X,4572) with the new sculpting.

So, both the old and new sculpting are legitimate as they ensure you pay no more then 4572 units in any one year period. The scandal is the way they switched between them such customers end up paying significantly more than 4572 primary over any one year period spanning the transition phase. Switching from old to new scheme in november would have been bad enough (because you have the more expensive months of the new scheme first), but interpersing it with a flat rate that is higher than both the old and new scheme is an unbelievable scam and their pseudo-justifications for it are so weak that I am confident they will get slated by Ofgem for it.

c0113tt3

RM5

As you understand / already stated it has happened that customers have overpaid in the last 12 months ie May 2007 to end of October 2007. What You may not have understood, is that it is possible to overpay the tier 1 in the future too. If they change the prices or switch on / off the current gas sculpting, the amount of tier 1 paid is RESET and it starts from 0 again. It is a certainity that prices change, and npower have a history of changing the sculpting on / off. You can put money on it, that you will overpay in the future too.

RM5_2

nearly wrote: »

I received a long, dense letter from npower in response to my queries.

It is also explained that the reason for turning on and off the gas sculpting procedure was to assist with the migration to a new billing system (it's easier to migrate using the non-sculpted system), and that they recognised that because of this they recognised that a higher number of higher rated units would be consumed than would be normal and therefore they set the secondary rates lower to compensate for this.

They state that from Nov 2007 they have reverted indefinitely to a sculpted system and that in the full tariff year the 4572 units would not be exceeded but for a 12 month period across Nov 2007 this might not be the case.
quote]
The above seems to imply that they have no plans to change sculpting again, but of course it would be naive to take their word for it.

Cardew

RM5 is correct in all his statements.

I think that it is a tactical mistake to attack sculpting as such. NPower can say, with justification, that sculpting does not affect the majority of customers as they will all use just 4,572 primary units in a year under whatever form of charging for primary units they use. The only ones affected would be those who used tiny amounts of gas in the summer.

The scam, and it is a serious scam, was to suspend sculpting last summer which will mean all of their customers will pay up to £100 extra.

That should be the sole aim of any attack on NPower. If it is widened into a general attack on sculpting and/or what they might do in the future, it will give them a chance to obfuscate.

c0113tt3

Cardew / RM5

I have an 8 page document from them, but a couple of excerpts state :

"The 4572 kwh is calculated across a tariff year, which begins at the change date of any change in gas price or change in application of pricing methodology"

Taken from my previous posting on this. I am sure you can understand what this exactly means, it DOES get reset again and again in the future (gas sculpt system), not just when / if gas sculpt changes, but also when price changes comes into effect !! .

So whenever a price change comes into effect, this also resets tier 1 paid to zero with a new gas sculpt back to the 4572. Hence YOU will pay more tier 1 than 4572. IF they leave it alone with no price changes, no changes to sculpt, then you will just pay 4572.

If anyone wishes to stay with npower, please take your chances that there will be no more price changes, or changes to gas sculpt, that both will account to paying more tier 1 than 4572.

Also take into account petrol has been increasing 2pence a litre every week for the last 6 weeks, due to the price of oil, which all of this is after the price rises on gas / elec, and media escalating there will likely be another gas / elec price rise. Will npower leave alone the prices and current gas sculpt? I think not.......

Cardew

c0113tt3 wrote: »

Cardew / RM5

I have an 8 page document from them, but a couple of excerpts state :

"The 4572 kwh is calculated across a tariff year, which begins at the change date of any change in gas price or change in application of pricing methodology"

Taken from my previous posting on this. I am sure you can understand what this exactly means, it DOES get reset again and again in the future (gas sculpt system), not just when / if gas sculpt changes, but also when price changes comes into effect !! .

So whenever a price change comes into effect, this also resets tier 1 paid to zero with a new gas sculpt back to the 4572. Hence YOU will pay more tier 1 than 4572. IF they leave it alone with no price changes, no changes to sculpt, then you will just pay 4572.

If anyone wishes to stay with npower, please take your chances that there will be no more price changes, or changes to gas sculpt, that both will account to paying more tier 1 than 4572.

Also take into account petrol has been increasing 2pence a litre every week for the last 6 weeks, due to the price of oil, which all of this is after the price rises on gas / elec, and media escalating there will likely be another gas / elec price rise. Will npower leave alone the prices and current gas sculpt? I think not.......

Sorry but I don't think you have understood the point I(and I believe RM5) are making.

Resetting the sculpting year doesn't matter at all, as long as they keep the same allocation of primary units for each month. The scam is when they suspend sculpting -as they did last summer.

To make the arithmetic simple, let us take an example where during the six 'summer' months you pay 4%(of 4572 primary units) each month(24%) and the 6 winter months you pay 12.67% each month(76%).

It doesn't matter at what point they reset the sculpting, you will still pay 100% of 4,572 in the future, and will have paid 100% in the past.

Think about it! Reset the sculpting year on any day of the year and it will still mean your will pay for 4572 for the forthcoming year, as you will have done for the preceeding year.

So on this quote:

So whenever a price change comes into effect, this also resets tier 1 paid to zero with a new gas sculpt back to the 4572. Hence YOU will pay more tier 1 than 4572.

I maintain you are incorrect. If a 'reset' happens on any given day in the year, you will not pay for more than 4,572 units. e.g. if the reset happens on, say, 31 Aug you will still pay 4572 in the year ahead no matter how many times in that year they 'reset' the accounting year.

The scam was last year when(to use my simplistic fictional example above) at a time when you should have only been paying 4% each month, they stopped sculpting and during that period you paid 8.33% each month.(100% divided by 12)

colonelhall

Thank you Cardrew,

You are absolutely right. The stopping and starting of the period is immaterial. Complaints about the higher weighting during the Winter months is a red herring. We will all pay 4572, if the sculpting continues.

It is the period between May 2007 and November 2007, where we were ripped off!

As this applies to every Npower customer, who had an account during this time, I cannot understand how the news is not spreading and that it hasn't hit the media. Millions of customers, being owed around fifty quid each is a big story in my book!

colonelhall

If anybody is good at maths, perhaps they could help me to debunk Npower's explanation, as to why were not ripped off.

They say that for the six months non-sculpted period, we were charged half a year's allocation.

Looking at a year previous to that, we were charged 4572, similarly the year after that. Therefore, we never deviated from 4572 - simple!!
I've only got O level GCE Maths, but my arguments are :

1) My contract started just five months before the disputed period, not one year.

2) They are looking at a 2 1/2 year period that contains three Summers and only two Winters!!!!!

notbritishgas

colonelhall wrote: »

If anybody is good at maths, perhaps they could help me to debunk Npower's explanation, as to why were not ripped off.

They say that for the six months non-sculpted period, we were charged half a year's allocation.

Looking at a year previous to that, we were charged 4572, similarly the year after that. Therefore, we never deviated from 4572 - simple!!
I've only got O level GCE Maths, but my arguments are :

1) My contract started just five months before the disputed period, not one year.

2) They are looking at a 2 1/2 year period that contains three Summers and only two Winters!!!!!

I ask the question, Do we want to be customers of a company who uses an argument like that?

RM5_2

Of course I am encouraging no one to stay with nPower, leave them in droves! But I think they deserve a bigger kicking than just a few customers leaving. Having to reimburse millions of customers after an embarrassing climbdown forced by Ofgem with all the negative publicity that goes with it would be a good start. In fact it has already been reported in the media, see
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/feb/09/householdbills.consumeraffairs
second half of article. However it seems that Mr Bramwell underestimates the scale of the problem (£27 per customer) and has been silenced with a £50 "goodwill" refund. BBC watchdog was also on the case. nPowers phone lines are incredibly busy, so it appears a lot of customers are complaining.

Colonelhall: It seems they change their line of defence quite frequently like you would expect from a lying defendant. Your 2 1/2 year argument is of course perfectly valid, but I would use their own words:

c0113tt3 wrote: »

"The 4572 kwh is calculated across a tariff year, which begins at the change date of any change in gas price or change in application of pricing methodology"

Even nPower will have difficulty denying that a year is a period of 365 (or 366) days, so the the tariff year they started on 1/5/2005 by changing to flat sculpting runs until 30/4/2008 and they can charge no more than 4572 primary units over this period, but in fact they charge up to 139.17% of that, i.e. 6363 units. Additionally they have to ensure that no more primary units are charges over the periods 1/11/2007 to 31/10/2008 and 4/1/2008 and 3/1/2009 (due to the price change in January), but this is automatically guaranteed if they stick (as promised) with the new sculpting schedule indefinately. The more often they change the rules the harder they have to juggle to prevent overcharging in any of the tariff years they kick off by this process. Due to the seasonality, "half" a tariff year is obviously not a valid concept.