 |
NPower
by Mick
I joined N Power Homecare 50 last April, an engineer arrived in a month to check if my boiler would be accepted. He inspected the boiler and was here for 15mins - a Worcester boiler 5 years old. He confirmed the boiler was OK, He did not service it.
10 months later I had a drip coming from the bottom of the boiler, being in the ... building industry for 35 years I am used to dealing with many different trades, one of our sucontractor plumbers told me it would be the heat exchanger and that the Worcester boiler I had was renowned for this fault.
I rang N Power on the Monday morning and was told an engineer would ring me to confirm an appointment.
I rang them on the Wednesday as I had not heard, they told me it would be Friday, an engineer turned up at 4.30pm and really did not want to know, he stated that heat exchangers were not covered under their policy, I had a copy of their policy and it did not state that within the policy. He agreed and rang their stockists to order a heat exchanger, union washers and a back board that was cracked, he read out the prices they were - Heat exchanger £198.00 the rest were a few pounds. He told me the parts might take up to a week to come.
I waited a week and had heard nothing so rang N power customer services who told me they would look into it and and ring back in 4 hours they did not return my call that day. I rang the next day and was told heat exchangers were not covered, I asked him to give me the paragraph within their policy that stated that, he referred to the sludge paragraph, the water dripping from the boiler was clear and I explained that to them, he told me a manager would ring back.
Eventually on Friday 2nd March he rang - 3 weeks from the date I first rang them and told me it would cost £900 to carry out the work needed, I asked for a breakdown - £345 for the heat exchanger ( quite a mark up on the £198) and the hourly rate was £90 per hour. I did lose my temper and apologise for swearing but what a terrible company to deal with, I have decided to get a local plumber to sort out the problem and he was horrified by their quote and will do the job for a lot less.
Read the complete review |
 |
NPower
by It's not all about the lowest price
I switched to Npower for my gas supply around 9 months ago and despite them being overall the lowest supplier, i cannot stress strongly enough how useless their response has been to any issues or enquries. Firstly their web site is hopelessly bad in comparison to my other provider (british gas), the information is poor and in my case ... bills do not appear on the site despite repeated requests to register for paperless billing. In practise this means I have been unable to review my usage and keep any eye on my direct debit payments covering my usage. I now find I've been paying about 30% per month too little and have a huge bill, but still no means to examine my usage. Npower only review your usage twice per year, so it is easy to find that you have been hugely underpaying (or over paying) with this supplier.
Npower response to complaints - just an automated email, two weeks later no further action. Ah....you think you can follow up by phoning the support desk in the evening - no, they only operate in normal office hours ! How very useful for a utility supplier !
Personally I'm in the process of settling my bill and will bear the small extra price rise to go with a supplier who invests just a little more on customer support.
Read the complete review |
|
|
NPower
by Razzmataz
The weather turned cold in November 2009 and our boiler stopped working due to the two port valve packing up and we got a local company to give us a price to replace the valve. But unfortunately for us we got too impatient due to freezing at home and we called in npower as well to quote for a new boiler assuming you are safer with a big ... name. HOW WRONG WE WERE!
Sadly we have learned only in hindsight about npower's deceitful sales tactics and their one size fits all approach with boilers and installations.
Npower were very quick to send round the sales consultant who turned up in a stylish Mercedes. He was an elderly gentleman who said he'd had his own central heating business for years and with his grandfatherly manner he gained our complete confidence. We believed him when he said our boiler was extremely wasteful of gas and so this was costing us money and that spare parts were no longer being made for it and therefore we should not waste time in going for a new boiler especially as there was the government incentive at the time. We trusted him as an expert and believed him to be sincere when he said repeatedly he was going to see to it that we would get a job done which would give us an "amazing" improvement in our central heating system.
During the installation the engineers went on the whole time about npower's customer complaints and what rubbish the boilers were and what an awful company they were!! We thought they were just a couple of blokes who were fed up with their job and their employers. But the extent to which they were running down the Company was almost amusing. Ironically we had no idea, yet!
We still were not alarmed when the electrician connected up the boiler and switched it on, because OMG! it was like a jet engine! The engineers said that's what they were like but the electrictian said it was because it was firing up from cold. This was the first sign that the boiler is rubbish.
The noise is unbearable when we sit at our kitchen table, the radiators are either baking hot or they cool down completely, throughout the house some radiators are randomly cold. We had a leak coming dangerously throught the hall light. The timer is not fixed properly to the wall but doesn't work anyway. They came back to rectify the problems and put in a bigger gas feed pipe but because the boiler would have had to come out this was installed down the outside of the boiler and is on show, like a bad DIY job.
The installation was completed on Friday and we complained on Monday by speaking to someone called John Senior and though he said he would see to it that we were entirely satisfied with the job we never heard from him again. This was Novembe 2009. We never paid the bill because we asked for a better quality boiler and for them to also rectify the botched pipework, the flue which emits steam onto the soffit boards, the timer, but they will not and for the last year or so have put the matter with an unscrupulous debt collection company. We are prepared to answer in court as to why we haven't paid.
Read the complete review |
