NPower or British Gas - Problem

Boppy_2

I transferred from British Gas to Npower in October 2006 for both my gas and electric and i use token meters for both.

The gas meter NPower put in was a new one so i got a new card, they told me it didn't matter for the electric, keep using the old British Gas key so i did.

I wanted continuous meters putting in so phoned NPower a couple of weeks ago who inform me they haven't had an electric payment ever from me (they must think i live by candlelight ) I explained i had a British Gas key that i'd been told to keep using, turns out British Gas had been receiving my payments. NPower told me they would send me one of theres.

I've been to get some electric today and lo and behold neither works, the British Gas one accepted my payment but comes up with an 'error:d6' on my meter and the NPower one is accepted in my meter but i can't put money on it.

I now have £20 on a key i can't use and £3 left on emergency, NPower are shut until Monday

What should i do? If i changed back to British Gas can i use the £20 on the key?

Thanks in advance.

UtilityMan_3

Did you put the key in the meter when received and push the button on the meter?

This registers the key to the meter and usually overrides the previous one.

For today, call your local electricity distributor (it's in the local phone book), act dumb, tell them you have no supply, when the engineer arrives they have the facility to top up meters in emergencies.

adrianlowes

UtilityMan wrote: »

Did you put the key in the meter when received and push the button on the meter?

This registers the key to the meter and usually overrides the previous one.

For today, call your local electricity distributor (it's in the local phone book), act dumb, tell them you have no supply, when the engineer arrives they have the facility to top up meters in emergencies.

It depends what region you are in as to if the distributor has the facilities to top up. I am in the Yorkshire area and work for the Distributor in that area. Our engineers do not have the facility to top up a meter anymore. I am the person who sends out the engineers. Generally we won't even attend unless it is a hardship case. With hardship cases we will totally bypass the meter, which we aren't supposed to do, because the suppliers (mainly BG and Npower) are that bad.
Hope that helps.
Where in the UK are you. I may be able to help if in my area.

UtilityMan_3

Hi Adrian

Very interesting regarding Yorkshire. I don't know whether southern engineers actually top up or bypass, just that they have the facility to ensure supply.

Regarding "hardship", my argument would be that having no supply, for whatever reason would be a case of hardship. As stated, act dumb, get the engineer out and see what he does!

Daft situation to happen on a Sunday when the suppliers are closed. They really should have something in place for Sundays. I have called all suppliers this morning and it's the same in every instance "Our offices hours are........ every day but Sunday"

adrianlowes

UtilityMan wrote: »

Hi Adrian

Very interesting regarding Yorkshire. I don't know whether southern engineers actually top up or bypass, just that they have the facility to ensure supply.

Regarding "hardship", my argument would be that having no supply, for whatever reason would be a case of hardship. As stated, act dumb, get the engineer out and see what he does!

Daft situation to happen on a Sunday when the suppliers are closed. They really should have something in place for Sundays. I have called all suppliers this morning and it's the same in every instance "Our offices hours are........ every day but Sunday"

It is a grey area for hardship and we tend to leave it to our engineers on site to make the judgement. The suppliers decided about 3 years ago not supply our guys with replacement tokens and they have never had keys for the modern type of meters. BG have actually gone to the extreme of saying that we cannot touch their meters at all. So if a cust is a BG customer and they have a faulty meter we simply pull the main fuse and advise them to ring BG, who don't offer an out of hours service. The main reason was they contracted out the metering side to United Utilities rather than Meterplus, who are in the yorkshire area. Again if our engineers feel there is a case of hardship we often bypass the meter anyway. Since privitisation it is a total mess and to be honest probably not much cheaper for the customer.

SwanJon

adrianlowes wrote: »

... if a cust is a BG customer and they have a faulty meter we simply pull the main fuse and advise them to ring BG, who don't offer an out of hours service...

I thought that this had been overcome.
BG runs a 24 hour service for problems with the meter. Historically this has been for gas, but should be for both.
The new key meters don't shut off after 6pm (until 9am), and they are looking at including Sundays in this.

Boppy - when Npower took over the supply they should have arranged for all the payments to be redirected to them, so in theory what they said was right (about carrying on with the old key), except you'd still be on BG's prices.
The meter's can only cope with one key, so as soon as you had put nPower's key in, the BG key becomes useless. You could see if the shop will be able to transfer the credit to your Npower key, or ask nPower for the money back.
nPower will have to ask BG for the money - you don't need to be involved.
(Was going to say if you could make it to 6pm tonight etc, but was working yesterday and got my days confused)

adrianlowes

BG offer a 24 hour service for answering the phone but the metering people (UU) don't work after 10 pm and won't accept any new jobs after 6pm.
If when you call you mention anything regarding you can smell any thing or you think something is exposed. All the suppliers will put you straight through to the Distributor (In the yorkshire area anyway) as they do not offer an emergency response anymore. We offer an emergency response but purely make it safe by removing the main fuse. The problem is the supplier will not raise a job with metering as they have to pay metering to attend. If the problem turns out to be anything but the metering we (Distributor) will probably sort it so it saves them money. If it is a meter problem, even if you have told them it is a meter problem they don't raise a job until after the distributor has attended.
With regards to the token / key meters not going off out of hours that will depend on how new the meter is. Yes I believe the new ones won't but a lot aren't the new type.
A lot of problems occur if the token / key meters are constantly run in the emergency credit as the standing charge is mounted up on the meter but not taken from the emergency credit but when the meter does click off through the emergency being used it adds all outstanding standard charges on so you can end up having to put quite an amount on your key / buy a lot of tokens to get your supply back on. (At least that is how a lot of the old meters work, not sure about the newer ones as we have less and less to do with them now).
Often out of hours there is not a lot that can be done. We are instructed not to bypass unles absolutely nessesary. We don't have means to put credit on and the suppliers can't / won't help much.
But it is supposed to be better privitised. Well done Maggie.

SwanJon

UtilityMan wrote: »

Very interesting regarding Yorkshire. I don't know whether southern engineers actually top up or bypass, just that they have the facility to ensure supply.

It's possible that as Southern electiricy board installed keys when they were the electricity board they know how/have the facility to apply credit.
Yorkshire electricty board installed paper token meters, so they haven't the knowledge/facility to top them up.

Adrian, what happens to a supply that was bypassed? Who goes back out and fixes it?

In the OP's case, the MOP can legitimately say no as there is nothing wrong with the meter and out of office hours they tend to. With the new meters, finishing at 10 shouldn't be much of an issue as the supply will stay on. I think this is what they are trying to address by changing the non-disconnect period.

Emergency credit is very similar to before, so if you use it you need to pay it back + any SC missed + any debt recovery missed. My Advice - try to avoid using it at all.

chocolate_sausage

Just a quick note to anyone that is despo trawling the net with an answer to the dreaded D6 error , the answer is this ring your supplier they will give you a tag number 8 digits which you take to any shop with paypoint this then refunds the credit to the correct key simples