NO power with Npower (NPower)

Member Name: thebigc1690

Product:	NPower
Date:	08/01/08 (298 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: cheaper for a few weeks!!

Disadvantages: Almost everything is a disadvantage with this lot.

I am sure most people out there have had the visits and the phone calls attempting to get you to change your gas and electric suppliers to various different companies, well here`s a warning for anyone thinking of choosing npower as I did.

There was no doubt at the time that npower were indeed the best value for money and this was exactly the reason I chose them but I soon found out there`s a lot more to the choice at hand then just the cost. The first problem I had with them came almost instantly after joining them, I have meters installed in my home which require you to top them up using pay cards rather than receiving bills. After joining npower I needed new cards from them to replace my old Scottish power cards, my gas card arrived within two days but I was advised that my electric meter would need to be read first before sending me a new card for it so this would take a bit longer. It ended up taking over a week for them to send out someone to read the meter and then a further ten days for them to send me a card during which time I had to keep using my Scottish power card which I was no longer being credited for.

I did consider during this time to tell them to forget it and stick to Scottish power but I thought everyone deserves a chance so I waited patiently for my electric card and thought the savings would make the wait worth while. I had been with npower for a little over three months when I received a letter telling me that the cost of both the electric and gas supplied by them was to be increased, so it seems to me they canvassed for new customers deliberately using their old price structure knowing full well that as soon as they were on board the price would rise.

The problems did not stop there, just recently I have had my biggest problem with them to date which has prompted me to write this and to change back to Scottish power. A few days ago my gas card stopped working, when I put it in the meter it just came up error. This happened at 6.30pm and we had no gas, having a 7 month old daughter it is important that my home is kept warm so I got straight on to the help line and told them my problem to which I was told no problem sir the new card will be with you within 48 hours.

I explained (or tried to) that I needed someone to come out and put emergency gas on my meter till my new card arrived (which Scottish power had done for me in the past during a similar problem) However it seemed that was beyond npower. The girl on the phone told me and I quote " sorry sir but we have no one working in your area at the moment our closest engineer is nearly 40 miles away and we cant ask him to travel that far at this time of night ".

I honestly couldn't believe what I was hearing, I asked her why there was no engineer in our area to which she replied " at this time of year we get a lot of people taking time of either with holidays or with illness and its hard to cope ".
So that was that there was nothing they could do for us and there was no one else I could talk to according to her until the morning. So we dug out an old fan heater and managed to at least keep the living room warm till morning when I then phoned and spoke to a manager who told me " if you had spoke to a manager last night they may have been able to do something for you but it is still unlikely that they would have asked an engineer to travel that distance ". I told him that there was no manager available according to the girl I spoke to and he replied " well that`s possible I guess but unlikely ".

It seems to me that npower have got little or no interest in their customers once they have them signed up, I bet if I had phoned them wanting to become a customer they would have sent some one to see me no matter how far away they were!

The long and the short of it is that if you are thinking of changing supplier then look deeper into it than just cost and stay well clear of npower.

©2008 thebigc1690

Summary: A company who promise the earth but supply nothing. Very poor customer service!