We moved to Scottish Power after the nPower fiasco and have been totally happy with them
Typical. How would I go about switching, as it's not like I have accurate figures to plow into a website is it :s lol
Npower - WTF? Stupid increase
- Thread starter Aruffell
- Start date
Typical. How would I go about switching, as it's not like I have accurate figures to plow into a website is it :s lol
Soldato
- Joined
- 29 Sep 2011
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- 6,224
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- melee island
Ecotricity are great, I can thoroughly recommend them.
We just had to give them current meter readings and take it from there.
Watch out as we were stuck in a contract with nPower, we would have left them sooner but were tied to them so had to wait until it expired. So check your paperwork and make sure you are alowed to escape first without penalty
Just like car insurance/home insurance. Quotes and shopping about unfortunately. It's a complete ballache!
I'm in Scotland. Once we are independent we are going to tell them all to **** off and start powering everything with fighting, shouting and FIRE! Lots of fire.
Considering how 'easy' it is supposed to be I'm inclined to agree - I had no end of hassle switching providers and it took months to get back to how it should be... even then there was an error in that the provider wouldn't register one of my accounts online.
It is one of those things where when it all goes smoothly it seems like the easiest thing in the world and you think anyone who has problems must be an idiot, but I really wish I hadn't bothered as it just meant lots of faffing about, phonecalls to timbuktu, random bills, having to chase up my £100 credit I was promised etc and end up thinking yeah great allegedly I'll have saved £85 or whatever but it has cost me more than that in stress and hassle.
Changing mortgage provider was easier than changing energy provider last time about for me!
Martin Lewis
uSwitch
Last time I did it, Martin Lewis' M&S deal was best for me, and that's M&S customer service running on SSE Gas / Electric service. Much better than nPower, British Gas, eON and Scottish Powers (Ranked according to worst service and cost from 7 years of experience).
Just spend an hour one evening, a calculator and some logic and then repeat it again every year or so, depending on the deals.
I'd move to one of the non-big-6 companies so you avoid paying for other people to have insulation added to their house. Take a look at https://www.first-utility.com/energy/
They are an absolute joke.
A couple of months ago they decided to triple our DD (~£300 up from £110). Needless to say I wasn't impressed, and called up to sort it. Came to an arrangement where we would be paying ~£160.
They failed to take the next DD, so I called up to pay manually, and set up the DD again (they pulled a different figure out of their **** this time).
The DD went out at the start of this month. For half the amount I was supposed to pay, so of course that means I have to spend even more time chasing them up to sort it out.
They are an absolute joke.
A couple of months ago they decided to triple our DD (~£300 up from £110). Needless to say I wasn't impressed, and called up to sort it. Came to an arrangement where we would be paying ~£160.
They failed to take the next DD, so I called up to pay manually, and set up the DD again (they pulled a different figure out of their **** this time).
The DD went out at the start of this month. For half the amount I was supposed to pay, so of course that means I have to spend even more time chasing them up to sort it out.
A switch on the table for you too then?
Associate
- Joined
- 3 Feb 2012
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- 2,272
- Location
- Bath
They tried it with me too.
£20 in credit at the end of last winter, they wanted to put my payments up from £72 a month to £156!
A call to 'customer services' ensued, I asked for an explanation from the rep and got a load of standard-response flannel which didn't actually answer my question.
I insisted on resetting the DD to £80 a month- they agreed but asked me to verbally confirm that I would pay any excess come bill-time.
Stupid, but easily sorted...
£20 in credit at the end of last winter, they wanted to put my payments up from £72 a month to £156!
A call to 'customer services' ensued, I asked for an explanation from the rep and got a load of standard-response flannel which didn't actually answer my question.
I insisted on resetting the DD to £80 a month- they agreed but asked me to verbally confirm that I would pay any excess come bill-time.
Stupid, but easily sorted...
I work for Npower (because there's no where else).
I don't know about other advisers, seems every time someone calls some adviser has screwed with someones account, I've gotten like 30 people sacked so far for not doing the job properly.
You need to stop complaining about your DD going up, its in your DD agreement that it will get re-assessed, based on usage/debt/credit.
Sometimes it goes **** up and does it completely wrong for whatever reason, because the system we use is so bad, its not even designed for the job.
Get this every day from people by the way...."why has my DD gone up! EXPLAIN YOURSELF!", "I AM A PENSIONER YOUR GOING TO GIVE ME A HEART ATTACK!" Oh please....
If you don't want your DD going up, ring with meter readings every month and get it re-assessed there and then.
If it goes up....call, give readings and re-assess, its not hard. Its your responsibility to give readings.
If it goes down....call give readings and re-assess
If a payment isn't taken, either you dont have enough money in your bank, we have the wrong details or an adviser cocked up the DD process and didnt do it correctly (this happens allot, I don't know why people here as so stupid)
But anyway, all the problems are easily sorted.
I don't know about other advisers, seems every time someone calls some adviser has screwed with someones account, I've gotten like 30 people sacked so far for not doing the job properly.
You need to stop complaining about your DD going up, its in your DD agreement that it will get re-assessed, based on usage/debt/credit.
Sometimes it goes **** up and does it completely wrong for whatever reason, because the system we use is so bad, its not even designed for the job.
Get this every day from people by the way...."why has my DD gone up! EXPLAIN YOURSELF!", "I AM A PENSIONER YOUR GOING TO GIVE ME A HEART ATTACK!" Oh please....
If you don't want your DD going up, ring with meter readings every month and get it re-assessed there and then.
If it goes up....call, give readings and re-assess, its not hard. Its your responsibility to give readings.
If it goes down....call give readings and re-assess
If a payment isn't taken, either you dont have enough money in your bank, we have the wrong details or an adviser cocked up the DD process and didnt do it correctly (this happens allot, I don't know why people here as so stupid)
But anyway, all the problems are easily sorted.
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Have to admit I'm on the complete opposite side of the fence with this discussion.
You only pay for what electricity you actually use. I'll admit that I'm in the fortunate enough position to be able to afford to overpay, but come every 12 months if I've got anything over £100 in the account then I simply ask for it to be credited back to my bank account.
Surely, even if they are increasing your payments, the bit that only really matters is how much you're going to be charged for the electricity you use (i.e. pence per kw)
If nPower are offering the best rate then ultimately, other than short term loss, what's the massive problem?
Like others have said as well (and as I've done) all it has even taken me is a phone call to say "no, I don't want to pay that much, please can we make it X amount".
Hell, I even argued that I wanted to pay MORE per month once after a letter telling me they were reducing it by £20!
You only pay for what electricity you actually use. I'll admit that I'm in the fortunate enough position to be able to afford to overpay, but come every 12 months if I've got anything over £100 in the account then I simply ask for it to be credited back to my bank account.
Surely, even if they are increasing your payments, the bit that only really matters is how much you're going to be charged for the electricity you use (i.e. pence per kw)
If nPower are offering the best rate then ultimately, other than short term loss, what's the massive problem?
Like others have said as well (and as I've done) all it has even taken me is a phone call to say "no, I don't want to pay that much, please can we make it X amount".
Hell, I even argued that I wanted to pay MORE per month once after a letter telling me they were reducing it by £20!
Yup, unfortunately due to their repeated failures to set and take the DDs correctly, we have an outstanding balance with them, so that needs to be paid off first =/
That's fair enough... when the account is in debit. When people have £100+ credit sitting in their account and you guys still decide to put the DD up, then it's a bit of a ****take.
Also it would probably make sense to actually discuss your customers if you're planning on increasing their DD by more than say 20%, since most people won't be particularly impressed by a letter out of the blue informing them of a 200% increase...
You expect them to employee hundreds of employee's just to call back customers?
You do realise there are millions of people with DD's right?
It would be nice sure, but its not feasible.
And yes it shouldn't be doing that, just dont take it out on the advisers, we can't do anything about it, its the **** system.
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If you do monthly readings online they have no excuses.
They are cheeky gits, most estimates are, from my experiance, over the top but what else can they do ? If you switch to them recently they can only go by Averages or data you supplied them on the switch, that usually ends up as you pay a crap load more than you expect, even after swapping to lower tarrifs. Until you get a few solid ref. points via the readings.
If you swap providers lots or have older parents that are not too money\tech savvy see if you can log into old energy accounts online to check their balance or find closing paper statements.
They are supposed to credit you back any balance but from my research on the matter sometimes they keep very quite about it.
I found my Mum £220 being 'cared' for by nPower when I was looking through her utility bills last visit.
They are cheeky gits, most estimates are, from my experiance, over the top but what else can they do ? If you switch to them recently they can only go by Averages or data you supplied them on the switch, that usually ends up as you pay a crap load more than you expect, even after swapping to lower tarrifs. Until you get a few solid ref. points via the readings.
If you swap providers lots or have older parents that are not too money\tech savvy see if you can log into old energy accounts online to check their balance or find closing paper statements.
They are supposed to credit you back any balance but from my research on the matter sometimes they keep very quite about it.
I found my Mum £220 being 'cared' for by nPower when I was looking through her utility bills last visit.
Credit is not refunded, until the customers asks for it, also the readings need to be up to date (last 30days).
You always receive a bill saying how much you are in credit, not Npowers issue to be honest.
And yes estimates are usually quite of, just give a reading sorted.
Most common calls are:
"My DD has gone up! FIX IT NOW OR I LEAVE"
"MY DD HAS CHANGED? WTF ARE YOU DOING?"
"YOU ARE HOLDING XXXX OF MY MONEY JUST TO GET INTEREST YOU @$%"ers"
"I CANT LOGIN ONLINE WHY??!?!?????"
Common responses are:
"Give me meter readings please and I can fix it for you"
"Readings please...."
"Readings are not up to date, provide readings and I can refund you the difference"
"you dont have a online account, go register"
Which is usually not acceptable to most people and ends up in throwing abuse at me, and then I just hang up on them.
As I said, don't take it out on the adviser, we are there to fix any problems you have, don't blame the adviser for the systems issues.
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