@npowerhelp nPower billing mess - ficticious final bill

[ScuL]

Hi folks,

 

Sorry this is going to be a lengthy one.

 

September 2011

After an unsatisfactory experience with Spark Electricity I decided to switch to nPower in September 2011.

 

In the beginning everything seemed to go smooth, monthly payments taken out and meter readings reported timely, everything worked out just fine. Until..

 

January 2013

We decided to move house in January 2013.

Between September 2011 and January 2013 I had been making DD payments on my old address without any interruption. As a result; there was a surplus credit of approx. £230 in my nPower account.

 

We moved to the new house and I had nPower set up as electricity supplier.

I phoned up the customer service desk to confirm arrangements regarding the move of properties. The new house was allocated a different customer number versus the old one.

 

I requested a final bill for the old address (which was sent and had already been paid for) and requested the surplus credit to be moved to the NEW account number rather than putting it bank in my bank account (*now wish I had never done this*)

 

Normal DD payments then commenced for the new account with far higher values than was required for the account, eventually leading up to nearly £500 in credit in my account.

 

May 2013

All of a sudden sometime in May, DD payments started to increase (up to 3 a month, with the same monthly fee). I phoned up HSBC to cancel these duplicate payments as they were incorrect. Spoke to nPower customer service, they were aware of a problem and said they would address it.

 

August 2013

nPower DD payments then fully ceased until August, where they attempted to take 3 payments in 1 go which I immediately had denied by the bank. Logging in to my nPower online account, even with the periods I had not paid my monthly DD, I was still well above the zero mark with a positive balance.

 

September 2013

I spoke with the nPower customer service desk asking them to look into this undocumented and unexplained DD payment behaviour.

Customer service employee instructed me to fully cancel payments and revoke my DD until they had addressed the problem.

 

November 2013

Several months went by and I received a bill well in excess of £900. By now I am fuming with their incompetence to sort their billing out and lodged a formal complaint.

 

December 2014

I've had enough of their incompetence and request to change suppliers to Sainsbury's Energy. nPower allow to let me transfer and confirmed they will sort me out with a final bill to clear up the confusion.

January 2014

Spoke to customer services about the status of the complaint (no news from nPower).

They requested me to send my HSBC bank statements to prove all payments made to nPower under the year 2013. I have contacted HSBC, got all the statements and e-mailed them through to them on January 2nd.

 

February 2014

nPower write to me that they are still dealing with the complaint and offer me a brochure to contact the Ombudsman.

 

March 2014

nPower contacts me to mention they have still not received my statements, which I then sent to them again on March 3rd.

 

April 2014

nPower contacts me again to say they have not received my statements. I have transmitted them again on April 19th.

 

After receiving a letter requesting to call them I phone up the complaints team and endure a hefty discussion. It must have lasted at least 40 minutes (on top of a 1h20m wait!).

 

Conclusively this is what nPower states:

- I have made payments close to £400 throughout 2013

- They deny of having received certain payments that have 100% been taking out of my HSBC account and I have the statements to prove it

- They have an outstanding charge of £1340 (it took me half an hour of pressuring the staff member to come up with this number)

 

What actually occurred:

- I have made payments close to £600 throughout 2013 and have bank statements to prove this

- I have moved the £230 mentioned in the beginning of this post from the old to the new account

- Even if the charges were to be £1340, the outstanding sum would only be around £500 and I am more than happy to pay that

- Additionally, £1340 is a ludicrous amount when knowing that our monthly average sits around £80.

 

I consider £1340 outstanding to be fictitious as they can not back it up with figures. Nor do they acknowledge my payments previously made.

 

For the life of me, I can not understand how hard it can be to simply produce a correct bill with a starting & ending meter reading and match that with the incoming payments.

I am aware that nPower have changed administration systems during 2013 which may have to do with this massive c**k up ?!

 

I requested them to give me an overall statement from the date of opening the account to the date of closing.

The customer advisor denied this request saying that nPower does not do statements of accounts.

 

I challenged him and asked him how they are going to prove the charge, which he challenged in saying that I can log in to the nPower on-line system and download every historical bill.

 

I actually tried this yesterday and the on-line system does not allow me to retrieve any historical bill, but in stead comes up with an error.

 

I terminated the conversation after not getting anywhere with such an inflexible representative.

 

What next steps should be taken?

I have not contacted the ombudsman just yet but believe I should do this sooner rather than later as it must be done within 9 months of raising the complaint, is this correct?