So for those of you who’ve not been paying attention the back story is here. Anyway, after all the fun and games with nPower with the bills and the demands and the final demands and the re-estimated bills and the real bills and the refunds and the apologies and the here’s £25 because we screwed up I was bombarded with a load of letters telling me how sorry they were, what they were going to do and a cheque for the aforementioned amount of £25. I promptly filed these and lost them.
I was toying with the idea of writing some indignant letter complaining that they’d promised me a cheque but it never turned up. OK, so not strictly true, but it’s not like I’d cashed the old cheque and they could check their systems and cancel it so I didn’t stiff them out of any more money (other than, perhaps, the cost of doing the above which, quite frankly, they deserve).
Happily (or sadly depending on your point of view) the cheque resurfaced among some other paper that had got muddled up among the stuff to be shredded (the mice go through a lot of shredded paper so I shred everything possible). It’s now been cashed and, hopefully, this is the last dealing that I will ever have with nPower. In the words of Smeagol: We hates them!
Now that nPower had my £40 I thought I was in for a long and protracted period of letter writing that would start with them sending me the final statement and end with me getting satisfaction. As has happened many times during the saga I was, once again, wrong. Just as I was phoning the Chinese for my dinner my mobile rang. It was the minion from nPower. It turns out he’d made a mistake (I retorted with “I thought you had”). It turns out that the final bill was in fact nearer £2 and he’d worked out the amount that the current bill was over, not the amount I was supposed to pay. £2 sounds a lot more sensible for the usage we had over that month and certainly better than £40. Of course the £40 payment had already gone through so there they were having taken nearly a year to sort the bill out, with a final demand for an incorrect amount having not acted on my previous call and me being overcharged to the tune of 20 times the size of my bill. Not a strong bargaining position. They knew this and instantly started with the actions they were going to take to placate me. The £40 would be refunded in full. The bill would be cancelled. A letter of apology would be sent and a cheque for £25 would be issued.
Now in the grand scheme of things £25 may not seem like a lot but you’ve got to remember that I only had nPower providing energy for a month and the house was empty for that month. The gas bill was pence. The electric bill was nothing and they’re giving me money. nPower have actually paid me to use them… and I still wont ever touch them with a barge pole again.
The only downside to this resolution is that I don’t get to write my indignant letter of outrage demanding an apology and recompense, although I may still write once the cheque has come through and demand I get written confirmation that nPower will never contact my mobile number or home number ever again unless they’re going to give me more money.
If you remember the Zozo and I aren’t overly keen on nPower. They didn’t do themselves any favours in how they [eventually] handled our final bill, but after phoning them up and complaining it seemed all was sorted. I just needed to wait for the new final bill, pay it and write a letter of complaint. Simple right? Wrong.
Today I [eventually - thanks NXEA] got home to a letter from nPower. ‘Finally!’ I thought, ‘A revised bill’. I cheerfully opened it wondering how much the final bill finally was. Oh look, it’s exactly the same amount as last time. Except this time it’s a final demand and if I don’t pay it in 7 days they’re passing me to the debt collectors. Great.
Girding myself I grabbed the phone and headed upstairs to get the old letters and the meter readings so I could tell them again. Phoning the special number reserved for debtors, paupers and criminals I enquired as to why I was holding an unrevised final demand when I was supposed to be receiving a revised bill that I could actually pay. The minion on the phone has a look into my account notes and indicated there may well have been a mistake. Indeed there has. To his credit the minion then suggested we sort it there and then over the phone rather that letting it go back into the bowels of the process to then no doubt surface again in a couple of months with nothing having changed. Agreeing with him I preferred my mobile number so he could call me back at the most expensive rate possible. There was then much being on hold while various departments were called and I was finally put through to another minion in the complains department.
The new minion was armed with my incorrect statement, my final readings and a new, freshly created statement and had the authority to sort everything there and then. He informed me that the old bill was over by 7 units on the night rate and 2 units on the day rate which sounded very low and proceeded to work out the new cost. Instead of being just of £53 the new bill was… just over £51! But as a gesture of good will they were willing to reduce it to £40. Lets just take a moment to let that sink in.
£51 to run a fridge for a month. Which was going to be discounted to £40 to run a fridge for a month.
I informed the minion that I thought that was quite steep given what was being powered then versus what’s being powered now and the relative prices. The minion said that this was now off my meter readings so I grudgingly accepted the £40 offer and paid with my card. I then asked for a breakdown of the bill including the start readings, final readings, amount per unit, final total of £51ish and the final discounted amount of £40 all clearly marked. The minion agreed, the call was terminated and my thoughts turned to dinner (Chinese, yay!) and the stinking letter of complaint I was going to write about the scandalous prices nPower seemed to have charged both The Zozo and I for power. After all, I wanted my £40 worth from them, and I was going to get it.
So, having received my very late, overly optimistic bill from nPower I called them today at my earliest convenience. I was asked to press 1 if I had a prepay meter… nope; 2 if I paid monthly by cash… nope; 3 if I paid by monthly direct debit… nope; or 4 if I paid by quarterly standing order… sod it, close enough. The call was answered quickly by a native English speaker which is always a bonus (one of the things I love about Scottish Power is their call centres are all in Scotland and you get a soft Scottish accent which is pleasing to the ear when you call them up) by someone who was only to happy to help, and apologise, and would I like to give her the meter readings from today so they could generate a new bill. I countered with a suggestion of giving her the meter readings from when they stopped supply me electricity in August last year rather than getting charged for months of electricity usage provided by another company. This seemed acceptable to her, the numbers were duly noted and more apologies were forthcoming. I was then offered to be transferred to the complaints department as she was in full agreement that I shouldn’t be happy with the situation as things stood. I declined stating that I also wanted to complain about other things too. I was told I could complain about everything all at once and I thanked her but declined since I wanted all further communication to do with the complaints to be in writing so I had a record.
Much as I would have loved to have gone ‘RAAAAAARRRR!’ over the phone it’s not the fault of the person in the call centre, she did apologise profusely and did everything in her power to sort things out. No, I want to go ‘RAAAAAAARRRR!’ at management. While I wait for my amended bill I feel the start of a letter coming on: Dear sirs….
When The Zozo and I were buying Little Cottage we discovered that its gas and electricity were being provided by nPower. Having previously decided that they were a bunch of thieving bastards I phoned Scottish Power the day we completed and asked them to take over our energy supply. They were more than happy to do this and the wheels were put in motion. A month later and everything was sorted from Scottish Powers side. nPower sent us a flurry of letters wanting to know why we were moving, trying to convince us they were cheaper and then, finally, that they no longer provided us power and the final bills would be along shortly. The final gas bill turned up some months later and was duly paid. A letter saying they were ‘having difficulty’ preparing our final electricity bill also popped up. How hard can it be? You’ve got a final reading from the last person to own the house, a final reading from us, you know how much you charge, surely you can work it out!
In the interim I’m getting calls every couple of months asking why I left nPower and did you know they could save us money. Each time I would inform them that they ripped off The Zozo and that basically they’d lost us as a customer. They’d then offer apologies and that would be that.
The last time this happened (last month) I was going to ask for our details to be removed from the marketing database and that they never call me again. I didn’t get a chance as the bloke hung up on me once I said “you’ve lost us as customers”. I didn’t swear, wasn’t shouting, just stating fact.
Yesterday an nPower letter arrived at the house. They’d finally (over 10 months late) produced a final electric bill… based on estimated readings… that was going to charge us more for electric in a month than I pay for gas and electric combined… and the period they’re charging me for is when the house was empty.
Let me run that by you again: nPower want me to pay more to run a fridge for a month (not kidding, most of the fuse box was actually turned off, the house was unoccupied, heating and hot water off, just the fridge running, not even the cooker clock was on) than Scottish Power want to charge me for gas an electric with 2 people living in the house (with the same fridge) after having adjusted our bill to cater for it being the coldest winter in God knows how long!
I know what’s happened, nPower have lost the final meter readings and are making them up from their “what we think a customer should be using so we can boost our revenue” tables. Well I’m not paying it. I shall be phoning them to complain and get the bill reduced today. I shall then be writing a letter of complaint demanding that they send me a written apology and that they, I’m writing, promise to never call or write to me again to pedal their overpriced electricity.
It was only the other day when I was saying life is great and isn’t giving me blogging material and yet here we are with nPower dropping something right in my lap. To avoid this being one very long shouty rant written over many days I’m going to present it as a number of shorter shouty rants posted as things happen. So, without further ado, some back story:
Before The Zozo and I lived together I was living in a large, 2 bed flat with electric heating and hot water, electric hob, large TVs, powerful computers on 24×7 and a lifestyle that ate through electricity. I was with Scottish Power and they charged me £50/month for this. When I left my flat they owed me £200.
The Zozo lived in a little 1 bedroom flat with gas central heating and water, gas hob and very little in the way of things that would eat electricity. nPower would charge her substantially more than £50/month for her electric and by the time she left she owed them a lot of money. Despite a number of calls complaining to nPower that things can’t be right they were insistent that there were no problems. Eventually they changed the meter but that didn’t help.
Personally I think either on of the other flats was stealing electric from The Zozo or there was a short somewhere. nPower didn’t care, they weren’t going to help, they just wanted the money. Whatever the problem was nPower now have their money and we’ll never touch them again with a barge pole.
Of course, it’s never that easy…