A very curious tale (NPower)

Member Name: Bryn Pearson

Product:	NPower
Date:	29/10/01 (483 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: gas and electricity from one suplier.

Disadvantages: total chaos and confusion.

I am having distinctly "interesting times" with npower at present.... let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time (ok, about 16 months ago) my bloke and I moved out of a flat and into the house we had bought. The house was then being supplied with gas and electricity by British Gas. (remember this, it is important.) We pottered along with them for a bit, but they were charging us twenty five pounds a month for electricity and we were using more like twenty five pounds a quarter. It was getting silly. We decided to change suplier largely so that we could get our money back - and the cheque did turn up.

Npower - well, the electricity tuns up and so does the gas, you pay somewhat less for having both, they offer you a deal and a weird box for your phone (which we decided not to bother with) and they charge more a month than we actually use. No changes, we thought. The bills are by direct debit, they sent us one bill per month, we thought that was fine.

Then one fine day a strange man came to the house, and he said "Is Mrs ******** there?" (this being the previous owner) "No" says I, and go on to explain that we bought the house off her over a year ago. "Oh" says he "Only according to our records, she's not paid her electricity bill in over a year." "Well, says I, not surprising since he hasn't been here, we have been paying the bills."

I remind you of an earlier comment - that when we moved in, British gas supplied the needs of the house, so why do npower think they have an outstanding bill for the last year? (We have been signed up with them for about six months.)Why are they asking for the previous occupant when she did not have an account with them? Why have they just sent us a 'welcome new occupant' letter to fill in? The plot thickens, and we suspect that somewhere along the line, a mistake has been made. We know we should have checked the bills more close
ly, but that's the only thing we've done wrong. After all, in the normal scheme of things, if you don't sign up with a provider and pay bills YOU DON'T GET ANY ELECTRICITY! If we hadn't sorted the shift out properly, British Gas would have been sending us bills, or no one would have been providing us with energy! Or so you'd think.

We know that the mistake isn't ours - we have all the paperwork showing our divorce from British Gas, our signing up for electricity and gas from npower and the more we look at the paperwork, the more weird it gets. It does look like they've only been charging us for gas and that we hadn't noticed (you might want to check this one if you think you have one supplier for both.)It is all very strange.

So far the moral of this story is that NPower are falliable and not to be relied upon. They have been making a bit of a mess, over the last few weeks, and have done little to sort things out. We are currently sending the photocpoies of all the relevant documentation - the letter they sent us when we signed up, that sort of thing. If there are any dramatic developments, I will update this.

Currently, we are seriously thinking about going back to British Gas, as they were on the whole, much better, and we never had any trouble with them at all.
I don't recomend npower - this sort of mess isn't encouraging, and it isn't even as though we tried to do anyhting unusual or complicated!

Summary: