Dear Jalexa

You may be right or wrong in your August 08 DD being insufficient but until it is proved differently I will take a reasonable opening thread at face value. The mistake that evomin made was, perhaps through lack of experience, not realising that with a giant right and wrong doesn't come into it certainly to start with. They have control and much as it may grate the DD should not have been cancelled without their specific ok. I liken this to standing up to the playground bully who is entirely in the wrong and says "I'm entirely in the wrong but if you do not "go away" I am going to give you a good hiding.

NOW I will tell you why I moved my problem up to board level at Npower after polite cs continued to contradict themselves partly because of their woeful system and frankly partly through always saying they understood but didn't. they spent a fortune, in relative terms, on my problem and eventually when I lost my sense of humour, in writing, and very effectively took them apart they stated the equivalent of corporate sulking.

THE PROBLEM? When A-L switched my DDs from my old bank when, so I was told, existing DD holders like nPower receive notification the DD does NOT continue it is treated as NEW so it comes with an INITIATION code. nPower put my gas one in but not the electric one. BANG went my dual fuel discount - very efficient on this - WACK came a card saying these were the new ways I could pay and something else I can't remember. NO MATTER how hard I tried at the start and no matter how often CS said "no problem" we'll fix the might of nPower was totally incapable of righting their own SIMPLE wrong. Eventually the joke was after refusing compensation because their pleasure was to put things right perfectly they somehow mamaged to overide their accounts department and overpay me £20. Weeks after I had left some senior "gentleman" wrote to me telling me of the overpayment but saying they wouldn't claw it back. THE DIDN'T even have the sense to realise that they were mugging themselves off royally and... perfectly!

Ok, I think there's a lot of common ground between us, believe it or not. (By the way I don't think my kids come on here...)

Let me just address your last paragraph. You're right; in theory it's the utility company's job to sort these things out, not yours.

Guess what? They haven't, and you're the one who's going to end up with no supply.

Now, on the one hand you can use forums like this to tell the whole world your story, but the heat and light that generates is purely metaphorical - you need something more real for your home.

Yes, call centre staff are paid to sort these problems out. More than once, in capability reviews or probation reviews that I've sat in on whilst deciding whether someone should still have a job I've heard a raft of excuses that boil down to 'I don't get paid enough to care about giving good service...' Part of me understands that. My experiences leads me, when calling companies, to want the best service but to expect the worst. So I cajole and persuade, and try to avoid telling people what they should do.

In theory that's wrong, it should be the big company cajoling and persuading me. That's not the reality though.

Hi davelewisdivingheader,

Thanks for your post and feedback on our comparison tool. I've passed your comments to our energy team and also asked our utilities manager, Scott Byrom to respond in more detail as soon as he is back in the office at the end of next week.

In the meantime, I can only emphasise that when displaying seasonal variations, moneysupermarket.com calculate annual consumption in the same way as all the other comparison sites, and as agreed with Consumer Focus. You can read more details about the voluntary Consumer Focus Confidence Code on the Consumer Focus website here. You can also download a PDF of the code here.

Once again, thanks for your feedback and please don't hesitate to drop me a line at any time. I’ll certainly do my best to help if I can. Alternatively, if you have any questions, please do call the moneysupermarket.com energy team on 0845 345 1296.

I hope that helps.

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Cheers,
Graeme Delap, Community Editor,
graeme.delap@moneysupermarket.com

Vote for your Community Star: Community Stars 2009

A suggestion to Money Supermarket - I love your site but suggest you vet people before allowing them to post to check they are not on the payroll of the company being discussed.

I'm afraid I find some of the things that have been said on this thread insulting to my intelligence. An example - saying that I may have overlooked the notification of the direct debit increase. If I knew you personally I'd invite you to look through my file to see for yourself that it was never received. Another example - saying I should have got npower's permission to cancel the direct debit. Just look at any direct debit guarantee and you will see that I was quite within my rights to cancel it.

As for giving in to bullies, it is this that ultimately leads to oppressive dictatorships. Someone has to stand up to bullies and if I am the only one who is willing to do so then so be it, even if that means doing without electricity. It would of course be a lot easier if others were to support me instead of blaming the victim.

Micro renewables are getting cheaper and more viable all the time. When everyone has them energy companies will have no businesses and their employees will have no jobs. Treating people like this is simply going to speed up that process. They may have the power no, but we will have the last laugh.

Hi evomin,

Thanks for your suggestion and glad you like the site.

We do require that all members validate their accounts by email and confirm their acceptance of the moneysupermarket.com Terms of Service and Community Standards. If you feel these terms have been violated, please do drop me an email and I'll be happy to take a look at it in more detail.

Forums, by their very nature, can be edgy places and I'm afraid that sometimes you do have to read between the lines sometimes and take the rough with the smooth. Not everyone is always going to agree and it's easy to hide behind a keyboard and to comment on an opinion or a decision someone else has made - without a full appreciation of their circumstances.

We don't discourage those with an insight into an industry from posting - they often have extremely helpful advice to offer. Similarly, we don't prevent official representatives of companies from responding to comments being made about them and attempting to resolve customer service issues if possible. We do draw the line at blatant advertising and touting for business however - quite rightly in my opinion.

At the end of the day, help can often come from the most unlikely of places. The ethos of this community is to help and support those trying to make sense of their personal finances and for everyone to find ways to save time and money.

Everyone has the right of reply - that's the nature of democracy.

I hope that helps. Do drop me a line at the email address below if there's anything specific you'd like me to take a look at.

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Cheers,
Graeme Delap, Community Editor,
graeme.delap@moneysupermarket.com

Vote for your Community Star: Community Stars 2009

Graeme Delap:

Reading between the lines, thank you for defending my impartiality.

Jalexa,

I'm often told it's best to read between the lines with my posts.

;o)

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Cheers,
Graeme Delap, Community Editor,
graeme.delap@moneysupermarket.com

Vote for your Community Star: Community Stars 2009

Oh dear.

Your first paragraph is impossible. Your third paragraph is the kind of thing that makes it good that the internet is both ephemeral and anonymous - did you really compare your hissy fit at N-Power to the kind of behaviour that stops oppressive dictatorships coming into being?

Your last paragraph suggests that whatever it is you're studying, it's not either micro renewables or economics. Have a nice day...

Thanks for your reply.

Graeme Delap: If you feel these terms have been violated, please do drop me an email and I'll be happy to take a look at it in more detail.

I don't have anything concrete, just a suspicion based on many of the replies trying to persuade me to give in to npower when I believe some of the money they are asking for has already been payed (I can't be sure of this as I still have not received the statement of account from last June, so I have no breakdown of the money they are asking for).

Graeme Delap:

I'm afraid that sometimes you do have to read between the lines.

This raises some questions about discrimination against people such as myself, who find it difficult to "read between the lines". I appreciate, though, that that is not necessarily a problem which can be easily addressed by those running a forum.

Graeme Delap:

We don't discourage those with an insight into an industry from posting - they often have extremely helpful advice to offer. Similarly, we don't prevent official representatives of companies from responding to comments being made about them and attempting to resolve customer service issues if possible.

I have nothing against this, as long as they are open about the fact that they represent these companies.