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Me and my partner have been fighting Npower since the start of 2007 and it is still ongoing.
When I met my partner 2 1/2 years ago she had a token meter and one day I went to put one of her tokens in to find that she had a debt on the meter of around £860 being taken at £3.02 a week.
She was unaware that there was a debt that high on the meter and told me that it should have only been around £64 from when she changed from a credit to a token meter but thought it had been paid off through the meter a long time ago.
We opened up a complaint well what a song and dance that has been. customer service have not been any help. one tells me one thing and they can do this and that while another says they can't.
mid 2004 credit meter was changed to a token meter with a debt on an old bill found of £64. however once the complaint was opened Npower said they need to look at the meter e.g. take it out and put in a key one as they said old one maybe broken.
We then find out the meter wasn't looked at and looking further into the account the debt is actually £1680 of which they can on the old meter only put a debt on of £999 as thats all it will allow on one go. this has gone on now since 2007 to the point we spoke to a manager on the phone for an hour and she said well you must owe it.
Before speaking to her 1st April gets our quartly statement december 7 to march 10 bill was £1448.99 on the 3rd of april gets a letter saying that the debt of £1500 will be taken at £10 a week and added to the token key in a few days.
We as manager why it has gone up £51 and she said it could be emergency credit. but it cant be right that from 10th march to april 3rd that it would be £51
She went onto say that a warrent of exacution was sent out to force a token meter in march 2006, however my partner phoned up june 2006 to ask why there was a warrent (this was logged on computer) when she already had a meter and they came march 2006 to change the something on the meter and gave her a new card.
The manager said there was a new card around that time but we would have to send that old one back in to prove our case. partner said that the old card was sent back to them in 2006 as they requested in writing to send it back which they still do now because when we went onto this new key meter they wanted our old card sending back to them.
She told us to put everything in writing explain everything and the back dated statements we had been asking for over the course of 2 years for 2004-2006 and mention this managers name so they know we spoke to her.
Now the other day we were told we still owe the debt they are not looking into it anymore now and if we want the back dated statements from 2004-mid 2006 they are £35 each statement which would cost us around £350
Is this right can they actually charge £35 per statement I thought under the data protection act (Subject access request) We are allowed for a small fee to have copies of whatever information companies hold on you for a fee of around £10??
She went onto say that they dont have to prove we owe the money we have to prove to them we dont how the hell can I do that when they wont release the information as we haven't got electric statements dating that far back.
What Npower have tried to say is that we had a credit meter in from 2004-2006 and never paid them (hence the warrent of execution to force one in march 2006) although there was already on here.
They haven't answered the question if we didn't pay electric for 2 years you would have cut us off.
Yes, your partner is entitled to all the information they hold on her when issued with a Subject access request together with the fee of £10.00.(they're most probably trying to scare her off by saying £35 per statement)
How did your partner pay for the electricity for 2004-2006 does she have statements proving payments?
They said that upto April 2005 she was paying by DD although will now have to contact the bank to get confirmation. As she doesn't have statements for that time period.
Only found 2 statements for 2004 one when DD was being paid and the month after it had stopped. because that was when she went onto a token meter mid 2004 although they say she was on a credit meter then and we need to show them recepts from tokens bought from a shop in 2004 to prove to them she did have a token meter but she said to them that she doesn't have them as they get thrown away after a few months.
So need to get statements from the bank now for mid 2004 to 2005 although in 2 years this is the first time Npower have said they were getting DD still in 05 because up until the other day when I phoned them they stood by the fact they never got paid for 2 years
Partner is with Halifax and online banking wont go that far back when looking at past statements.
We've been passed about since 2007 when the debt questioned.
I was told the statements npower has are archived 2004-2006 and because they have to go where ever it is they are we have to incur an admin charge of £35 for each statement. when I said I thought it was a maximum charge of £10 (Subject access request) I did put this in writing when I sent the letter to them 4 weeks ago. she went away and came back 5 mins later and said I just checked for you about the £35 charge and its a grey area I will have to call you back when I find out more about it and see what we can do.
Well since then its been 2 days now and no calls?
Just another thing I dont understand when I go into EM credit on a meter and incur a standing charge because I dont understand how this works.
For instance if I use £2 of the £5 EM credit and I put in £10 I pay back the £2 and only get £8 credit.
Is there an additional charge per day/hour/min or something I dont know about?
Because I keep getting told that if I go into EM credit then that will be adding the debt up?
The £35 charge per statement is rubbish, as previously stated you have a legal entitlement to see everything they hold on you, you would need to make a SAR for which the fee is laid out as £10, they cannot vary the amount of this fee.
I really wouldn't waste your time calling them, they will basically say whatever it takes to get you off the phone and promise all sorts of call backs and complaint escalations. they don't even log accurate call comments, a lot of their operators haven't got a clue and are KPR driven to get through the max no of calls in the shortest possible time
As you were advised by NPower, put everything in writing and ask for a copy of their complaints procedure, follow this, and don;t feel shy about chasing them up. It is obvious, even if the meter isn't faulty and their charges fair that you have been dealt with correctly. It would be advisable to list everything in chronological order, if only to assist you in clarifying exactly what happened when and so on. If you do speak to anyone at NPower, insist that they log the call and you do likewise
When NPower fail to resolve you complaint, request their final word and complain to the Ombudsman. NPower are the worst of the worst and they rely on people not complaining and not knowing their rights.
Hi Guys, disagree with your last comment spamheed aswell as the KPR driven & not having a clue (yip i work for them), I do not know where the £35 charge per statement has come from as this is incorrect information that has been given, you can call npower & request a SAR form, it will be sent & then send in the fee (£10), Once you get the statements i'd pay attention to the statement/bill produced after any meter exchange from credit to prepay, which should show the amount of debit built up off the credit mtr.
with regards to your comments on the key meter, you can not get into debt by going into the emergency credit, gas meter total diffrent story as these can do into time based recovery.
hi, dont know if this will help, but i was on a pre-payment meter with Eon june 07- jan 09 and every now and then we would get a bill from Eon saying their meter readins and amount due, amount paid etc.. usually there was an outstanding bill of about £20ish per bill that they would send us, i phoned Eon the 1st time i got one of these bills and said i couldnt understand why im being sent a bill when im on a prepayment meter and a very nice Eon lady told me that as this would be a result of them failing to set my meter correctly then they will remove the remaining balance and they did this every time i got a bill and phoned up. I dont know if this is an Eon rule or if theres some kind of legislation to this which if there is then you can argue that your bill was increasing as they failed to set your prepayment meter correctly and therefore dont have to pay the bill.
Do you still have a cardmeter farmlama? If so, watch out when they change it to a keymeter. If they haven't come out to reset the cardmeter with the correct prices, they will try and set a "debt" on the keymeter when they fit it. EON will say that you have been paying less for your electric than you should have been and so you will have to pay back the shortfall through the keymeter. A lot of electric suppliers just write off this "debt" but EON don't! Even some that don;t write it off, cap the amount that gets paid abck - eg: NPower. EON don't do this either. I work as a meter-reader and I have seen some customers with over £500.00 "debt" set on their new keymeter for this reason. Beware - whatever the person on the phone told you!
Hi Guys, disagree with your last comment spamheed aswell as the KPR driven & not having a clue (yip i work for them), I do not know where the £35 charge per statement has come from as this is incorrect information that has been given, you can call npower & request a SAR form, it will be sent & then send in the fee (£10), Once you get the statements i'd pay attention to the statement/bill produced after any meter exchange from credit to prepay, which should show the amount of debit built up off the credit mtr.
with regards to your comments on the key meter, you can not get into debt by going into the emergency credit, gas meter total diffrent story as these can do into time based recovery.
Of course everyone is entitled to an opinion, mine is based on a complaint which went on for almost three years, being told by one of your wonderful colleagues that they had resolved/escalated my complaint, only to find from another that they hadn't done anything. having my complaint marked as closed without any notification. the fact that it took the involvement of the Ombudsman to get your employers to accept that they were wrong.
Or what about the thread as above, one of your colleagues telling blatant lies in an attempt to put off a caller and avoid actually doing any work or making the slightest attempt to consider customer care, I stand firmly behind my claim that NPower and their call centre drones don't have a clue
Yeah everyone is entitled to an opinion & npower is far from perfect & yes they get things wrong, & npower takes it serious if anyone just fobs a customer off or avoids taken calls & that should have been brought to the attention of the complaints team or the manager who would have had it fed back to the advisors manager to decide what action to take next, & every call is recorded so it isnt a case of customers word against advisor.
call centre drones dont have a clue?? this is of course your opinion off 1 bad encounter of customer service from npower, you were let down from what i read in your thread. I only work for the company but i am proud of what i do & nothing more pleases me than helping someone out with the account/meter issues.
People don't post regarding Happy encounters with companies only the bad ones.
Do you still have a cardmeter farmlama? If so, watch out when they change it to a keymeter. If they haven't come out to reset the cardmeter with the correct prices, they will try and set a "debt" on the keymeter when they fit it. EON will say that you have been paying less for your electric than you should have been and so you will have to pay back the shortfall through the keymeter. A lot of electric suppliers just write off this "debt" but EON don't! Even some that don;t write it off, cap the amount that gets paid abck - eg: NPower. EON don't do this either. I work as a meter-reader and I have seen some customers with over £500.00 "debt" set on their new keymeter for this reason. Beware - whatever the person on the phone told you!
we have moved house now and no longer have a meter, direct debits now, our final bill came through with about £2 outstanding and i phoned them up as usual and they removed the balance. so i guess we got lucky
Npower bill dispute since 2007
) We are allowed for a small fee to have copies of whatever information companies hold on you for a fee of around £10??
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Originally Posted by crk81
