NPower Price Hike

Vkitcatt

hi Martin,

As an avid reader of your newsletters - they ALWAYS give me sound advice, I thought you might be interested in hearing of my experience with Npower.

Although my meter was read last year, NPower simply sent me estimated bills, which I paid without a qualm, after all they've been providing me with my electricity for over seven years now, so they must have a good idea of how much energy I use in a year, right? Well yes and no.

NPower phoned me in April and asked me for an up to date reading and then produced an invoice, saying that they'd underestimated me for a year and now I would have to increase my direct debit to cover it. my bill was for £240.00 MORE than they'd estimated! In addition they hadn't paid me my dual fuel discount for last year saying that because I had stopped the direct debit for one month when I was changing banks (I used to be with Northern Rock) they would not pay it.

As you can imagine I phoned them, complaing about A/ the fact that they'd witheld the discount and B/ that they had charged all the underestimated KWH's at the new price which took effect on January 4th this year.

The result was that they sent me an amended bill with the £75 discount, but still charging me for the underestimated units at the new price. I phoned yet again and was told that there was nothing they could do, and that I hadn't bothered to give them and up to date reading, and that the last quarter had been a winter quarter blah blah blah. I replied that I would give them a reading that day and they could work out my average consumption from that, but the response was that nothing could be done. I responded by saying that I had proof that my meter HAD been read on three occasions last year by a meter reader, and that I suspected that they had deliberately ignored those readings and continued sending estimated bills out until the price change this year, so that they could cash in even more, and that I was certain that Watchdog and Martin's MoneySaving Tips would be interested in my theory. I was then put on hold for about 20 minutes while he checked with his supervisor that nothing could indeed be done. When he returned, I was given a reference number and told that my complaint had been submitted to the investigations department. Two days later - today in fact, I received another phone call from NPower's investigations deparrtment, telling me that they will now amend my bill to show that I have not used 1391 units since January 4th at the new price, but only 890! As a result they are now sending me yet another amended account with 500 units at the OLD price, and only the 890 at the new price.

I think my persistence paid off in the end but if it hadn't been for you giving me so much good advice over the months I would never have followed up, so I would be happy if you could share my experience with other readers of your emails. You never know, there may be others in the same situation.

Kind regards, and thanks again

Vivienne Kitcatt