Npower - thieves and con men (NPower)

Name: gmuston

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Product:	NPower
Date:	01/04/04 (1360 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: none, unless you enjoy banging your head on a brick wall.

Disadvantages: Costly, Untruthful, Untrustworthy

Now here's a long story - it spans nearly a year and a half - but I'll be nice, and provide a simple summary : Do not sign up with NPower under any circumstances! If you ARE signed up with them, do everything in your power to LEAVE - immediately.

Anyway, here's the detailed report:

More than a year ago, I moved. NPower had provided dual fuel to my original house, let's call that house 'A'.

Three weeks before moving, I went to the post office, and filled in all of their forms to have my post forwarded from house 'A' to house 'B'.

Two weeks before moving, I telephoned all my service providers, including NPower, and told them that I would be moving.

On the day that I moved, I telephoned NPower, and gave them the final meter readings.
They said that my final amount would be taken by direct debit at the end of that month.

Being a trusting sort of a person, I believed them. An amount was taken at the end of the month. I emailed their support desk to confirm that my account was closed. I still have a copy of that email, thankfully, as well as their response. 'Yes', they said, 'your account is paid in full, and closed.'

When I arrived at my new house, I found that the fuel was provided by Eastern Seaboard and British Gas. I compared suppliers, and found that for the time and the area, I would save by switching both to British Gas, which I did. I've had no problems with the supply since that date.

In November last year, I received a very strange letter from NPower.
They referred to address 'B', and said that I had not paid for the supply of dual fuel to address 'B' for over a year, and that my supply would now be cut off. No account numbers were provided on the letter, and there was no reason to suspect that it was anything other than an error.

I made sure that I hadn't slipped into an alternate dimension,
and sent a letter back, stating that they had not, to the best of my knowledge. ever provided me with any form of fuel at address 'B'.

Another letter arrived, threatening 'final action' whatever that is, and stating that someone would be around to turn off my fuel.

I sent a reply back, stating that they were welcome to try to turn off my fuel, but that British Gas would probably object to them tampering with their fuel supplies. I repeated that they had never supplied fuel to this address.

I received no response for several weeks.

I then received another letter, stating that my account was to be handed over to the courts, and that I had failed to respond to any of their letters. Obviously, I HAD been responding, but their internal administration, as you will see if you read on, is a joke.

I decided that there must be a policy in place at NPower to shoot postmen on sight, and sent my next letter by email. I explained that I had received, and responded to, all of their letters, and that their letters made no sense.

After all, I was in posession of an email stating that my old account was paid in full, and there was nothing on any of their letters to indicate that the letters referred to house 'A'. Indeed, every letter referred explicitly to house 'B'.

I finally received an email apologizing for the confusion, and saying that the amount was for house 'A'. It took them three letters to work that one out.

I asked for a detailed statement, and told them, again by email, that they had told me that my account was paid in full. I also asked why it had taken eight months for them to send me a bill, and pointed out that my post was still being forwarded (I had taken out a 12 month forwarding plan, which I then renewed for a further 12 months). I have yet to have a direct answer to any of these questions, but I have worked out a few things from other statements that
they have made.

Being a helpful sort of a bloke, I agreed to accept that they had made a mistake, and offered to pay off the account in ten installments. They gave a further demonstration of how poor their reading skills and attention to detail are, and asked me for £10 a month, rather than ten monthly payments.

I offered to set up a direct debit for payments, but they refused, as their systems apparently do not allow them to do this for ex-customers.
A payment card arrived in the post a couple of weeks later.

I decided to pay off this nonsense as quickly as I could afford, so, instead of making a monthly payment of £10, I made payments of £20. This confused them.

I then received another letter in the post, stating that I had not responded to any of their correspondence, and that my account would be handed over for collection.

Back to the email, I sent another one, stating the reference number on the letter, my account number, and the fact that I had, by that point, made two payments of a sum greater than the one originally requested by NPower.

I was assured by a Mr. Simon Faulkner that a 'note' would be put on my account, preventing ANY further letters being sent, and explaining the situation. Silly me, I beleived him.

A couple of weeks later, I received evidence that Mr Faulkner is not a man of his word, because, through the letter box, there came another 'final statement', again insisting that I had not responded to any of their correspondence.

The emails flew again. At this point, another person, a Ms Gaynor Malpass, entered the picture. Apparently her skills in deceit are greater than Mr Faulkner's. She claimed that they had no record of any correspondence, that there was no note on my file, and that the minimum payment they would accept was £28 a month.

As far as I was concerned, by this point, they were compounding one error with another, and I had no
guarantee that they would stop here. I dug my heels in hard, and insisted that they either stick to the original agreement, or give me a very good reason why they were changing the terms of the agreement.
I sent them copies of all their correspoindence, proving that they had said a) that my account was paid off and b) that, even though a) was wrong, they would accept monthly payments of £10 by payment card.

By this point, I had made three regular monthly payments.

In every email, I had requested a detailed statement of all transactions since the day I became a NPower customer. I had still not received one by this point.

I then started receiving more final demand letters in the post, each of which I complained about by email to Ms Malpass.

Ms Malpass gave platitude after platitude, assuring me of how sorry she was, and that things should never have got to this point, and that she was happy to receive my current monthly payments.

Then she handed my account over to a debt management service.

I demanded that she reverse that action. She claims that this is not possible.

Fortunately, from speaking to several NPower employees 'off the record', I now know what is going on in that department.

An office drone had closed off my account, erroneously. My last payment had been entered twice, which had caused the FINAL payment to be incorrect. It took them eight months to realise this, which only happened when they did a full bank reconcilliation.

As a year's books have now been closed, Ms Malpass, knowing little of accounting principles, feels that she can not reverse any actions. Any good accountant will tell you that a credit can be passed against a debit, regardless of how many financial years have elapsed inbetween.

I now have a debt management company sending me rude letters, and I feel that my good credit record is in danger, all because NPower insist on employing th
e lowest of the low, and keeping pathological liars such as Ms Malpass in their employ.

I have send details of all of her errors, including her confessions, to the debt company. It should be interesting to see what they say - assuming, of course, that they are a real debt company, and not something run by Ms Malpass's half-brother from his cupboard under the stairs...


I can not stress this more clearly : Do no, under any circumstances, have any dealings with NPower whatsoever. If they are the only provider left in Britain, then try rubbing two sticks together, but don't have anything to do with them! They have all the honour and business sense of a rabid ferret.

Summary: