Hi Guys

I desperately need your help.

I'm in a massive battle with Npower over inflated bills and they are being useless as ever.

The problems started 2 years ago when they decided to change our meters. I was told this was a legal requirement (very rudely I might add) by npower. Once the new meters were installed, we started seeing problems straight away. I've been with npower for nearly 5 years and have always paid a direct debit to make sure that we didnt have a huge bill every 6 months to pay.

However, once the new meters were installed, we didnt get a bill for a year down to issues with their new billing system. I was then sent a bill which made no sense saying that I owed them £400. So, I set up my direct debit to increase payments to £100.

I then get a bill in Feb 2015 saying that they were increasing my direct debits to £125 per month even though I had called them with the correct meter readings. They asked me to do a load test which I did, however, they were saying the numbers were correct. I suuplied them with these load test readings in March - I got a call from them in July saying they had only just processed them.

I then complained to Npower which turns out, is pointless and then I received 4 bills over a space of one week with various different amounts. All of which were completely inflated and were back dated to 2012. (when we had old meters).

I then recieve a 'final' bill in August (at this point, we have changed provider as npower were becoming impossible to deal with) of £643 - again, a completely inflated number and totally different to the last bill I had recieved.

In between all this, I have submitted a complaint to Ofgem who have turned out to be just as useless to which they then spotted that Npower had submitted the incorrect meter readings and that i was to expect an even higher bill.

I then recieved a bill for £747 (now inflated from their 'final' bill) saying I had to have this paid by the 2nd October (i recieved the bill on the 1st Oct). Again, this bill is dated from sept 2012 - May 2015. Why am I being back billed? This isnt allowed right?

In a nutshell, I've been paying a direct debt of £75 a month for over a year. The are now demanding a further £737 on top of that. I have a tiny 2 bed flat and we are only using them for electricity. My consumption has not changed AT ALL and my bills have just gone through the roof with no explantion and numbers I just cant make sense of.

I dont believe that in one year my bill can be £1,637 when it used to be approx £750 a year.

I really dont know what to do - I dont want to waste money on legal fees but I do believe that npower have completely messed up my bills and therefor over charging me.

I'm completely stressed out and suffering major anxiety over this.

I've been told to send a DSAR form - what form of payment am I able to send?

Can anyone advise me?

Thanks

Ange

Start off by reading all the npower threads in this forum. You'll start to understand that you're not alone but also you will start to understand the kind of advice is being given what you should do.

For the avoidance of doubt however, you should read our customer services guide and implement the advice there and then have phone calls with npower and make sure that you record all the various versions you get.

The next thing to do is to send a Subject Access Request. Accompany this with a £10 fee in the form of a cheque because this will help you to keep tabs on your request more easily. Check with your bank every two or three days to see whether the cheque has been cashed.

In the meantime, make sure that all your paperwork is in good order so that you have access to everything in date order than that you understand the story completely.

Read up the rules on back billing. Check your credit file. When you get the subject access request disclosure then go through it very carefully and try to understand if anything is missing – but also what interesting revelations there are because it is highly likely that the SAR will disclose a lot of errors that they have made.

Then come back here and let us know.

Make sure that you keep an eye on the account numbers are being used. Is not unknown for them to use different account numbers and to be in a complete mess. Make sure that you doublecheck the meter numbers against the statements et cetera et cetera.

Npower are a complete shambles. They've already sacked one CEO and it seems to me that a lot more of them should go as well.

Ok thanks for the advice.

I'll get a SAR request out and take it from there.

I'll let you know how I get on.

Also, has anyone found Ofgem useful? All they did was tell Npower to send me a final bill and explain the charges which they didnt and Ofgem are saying its not their problem if Npower are billing us incorrectly.

I haven't come across anyone who is thought that the regulator was at all useful. In fact he seems to be lazy, unenquiring and frit.

By all means make a complaint so that it leads it adds to the file and to the statistics. However, if the regulator was any good, npower would have been sorted out years ago instead of the piecemeal gestures that have been made over a long period of time.

You could very usefully write to your MP and if possible make an appointment with your MP.

If you do write your MP keep it brief. They are very brief and they receive a lot of correspondence. You need to get your message out to your MP in barely a side of A4 paper and make it punchy and stick to the point.

Make sure that you give a good paragraph on how badly it's affecting your life.

Let us know what your MP says

Ombudsman services believe every word the energy companies tell them and disbelieve any evidence you send them unless it is actual bills etc sent out by energy co that contradict the lies told to ombudsman. They have different levels of investigators and you need to get beyond level 2 and hittingthem with a SAR and specify you want the correspondence and phone call tapes they had with the power co as the main portion of the sar. they dont like that.

Thanks for the advice.

I appealed the final decision from Ofgem and they 're-investigate' however, they came back with the same decision.

I still believe that my bill is incorrect and over inflated.

My question is this, if I reject the ombudsman's final decision, what happens now? If and when I get the SAR back, what do I do with this?

You are not bound by the Ombudsman decision. When your SAR comes back the first thing is to check that it is complete, npower have a history of missing things out.

You then should go through the information and work out what is wrong.

Hi There

I have finally received my SAR which as you can imagine, is a STACK of bills and correspondence. I've not gone through it in details however, can still see that there is no sense in what charges they have applied to my account. Because they didn't send me a bill for an entire year, there is no information for 2013 other than the payments I made. I have no idea what my bill would have been in that time and therefore, without this information, the final bill amount seems incorrect. Also, it looks like in accordance with some standard guideline, they have applied a £549 discount but there is no explanation of where that figure is from or what its been applied for. My questions are:

1. Once I go through the SAR, what do I do?

2. Can they charge me for bills that are back-dated for over a year?

3. The fact that there is no bill for 2013/2014 - will this help my case?

4. Will proving inconsistencies with their billing amounts help me case? Ie. 15th March 2015 I had a bill for £347 and then 22nd March 2015 I got another bill for £580. All the while, I have been paying DD of £75 a month.

It's also worth noting, that we have since moved to First Utility who have told us that the numbers that npower have been billing are way too much. We have 2 meters and they have said that there is no need for a 2nd meter and this number should not be taken into account when billing us which is what npower have been doing. Can I use this information against Npower?

Any suggestions on what my next move should be would be really helpful - I'm a bit in the dark as to what to do next and dont want this money grabbing corporation to win.

Thanks

Angelique

I am sure others who are more knowledgeable will be along soon with advice. I wonder if producing a spread sheet with all the information might be a good move, that way you have everything in one place rather than having to flick through a stack of paper.

You should do what citizenB suggests.

When you have gone through the SAR you should compose a list of what you feel is wrong.

The bills for 2013 which have not been supplied should not be chargeable as they would fall under the accurate billing rules, if other bills have been sent then they are allowed to charge for the usage.

The inconsistencies with your bills will certainly help you.

Hopefully others will also come along and give advice.

forgive me if you have already explained this but i got a bit lost reading through.

You refer to 2 meters?

Most of us have 2 meters, a gas and an electric one.

Do you have 2 electric or 2 gas ones?

Or does your bills show two meters where there should be one?

There seem to have been multiple reports of people being charged double or even treble after meter change and multiple meters registered by incompetent 'fitters'

Hi there

So we have no gas in our flat and should only be charged for electric however, we have 2 meters for this. I was told back in 2012 that it was by law that npower needed to install these two meters. So as a trusting consumer, let them. its since we've had these two meters in that we've had huge problems with our bill. The first problem is that we didn't get a bill for a whole year and then when we did, the numbers were over inflated even though I supplied regular readings.

I've queried the fact we have 2 meters and they have said that one is for day/night and the other is for heat. But that makes no sense as I have storage heaters in the flat that only work when we switch them on at the power source. When we originally had them installed, the first engineer turned up and said he had no idea how to fit them. I then had to have another call out which was then successful.

As I mentioned above, since we have moved to another utility provider, they have confirmed that there is no need for the 2nd meter and that we should never have been billed off that number.

Citizens AB have said to either contact ofgem or take them to court. I'm worried that the court fees will cost loads and that I'm just going to be out of pocket.

Has anyone fought npower and won?

Thanks

Ange

so you are on the old economy 7 type tarriff or something similar?

Which should still be only one meter, although I'm not up to date on current off peak tariffs

If you are using storage heaters on normal tarriffs, let alone two meters, that will be expensive.

https://www.npower.com/home/help-and-support/types-of-meter/economy7/

Sounds to me a possibility you may be being charged twice for the same electricity - as well as not being put on the correct tariff with an appropriately set up meter when they changed the meters.

thanks for the advice.

However, we've had storage heaters for over 5 years and the bills previous to the new meters being installed were fine. Now we have 2 meters, we had to give them 3 readings, not just 2. So they have been applying bills for the second meter as well as the first.

Has anyone fought npower and won?

Hi. Cagger eversir did.

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?436401-nPower-Mismanaged-account-County-Court-claim-issued-aganst-Npower&highlight=npower+court

HB

Is your tariff economy 10? If so npower had great difficulty billing this.

Yes i had what sounds like a similar issue and i WON! and yes it's GREAT news about Eversir

Thread of my experience here..... http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?442997-Yet-another-tale-of-woe-from-an-NPower-customer.

I do hope it's of some use to you.