Hi I have received a gas bill from Npower for my old address for over £700. I left my previous address in Feb of this year and we recieved a letter dated March 2009 saying we were in credit £30 with Npower, I contacted npower to close account and get refund and sent them a copy of the front page of my new rental agreement as confirmation of new address, unfortunately i never heard back and have admittedly forgotten all about it. Today the letter recieved states they have added £7 onto "my debt" as they had to trace my new address!

I know that my previous house has been empty since we moved out as the landlord has put it up for sale, so presumably the gas debt must be an estimated bill on our previous usage.

Will i just have to send proof of my new address and the date we moved in and maybe a gas bill from my new house to get npower to close my account?? Also will this show up on credit file as my debt even though its not mine??

Any help appreciated- thanks

Pixie09:

My goodness. There are multiple issues going on here. You need a very systematic step by step approach to sort this before it gets out of hand.

Lets start with what you should have done immediately you left your old address so that you can work out what you did or did not do and therefore still have to do.

What you should have done is to have taken a closing meter reading and phoned the customer service line and announced you were leaving. The adviser would have done a workflow which would have asked for the closing reading and a forwarding address. That's about all. Possibly they would have tried to sign you up for your new address. There would have been no need for rental agreement proof of new address at that stage.

OK, You didn't contact them until March. Was that by telephone? Did you tell them you had left? Did they ask you for a closing reading? Did you tell them the closing reading? Or did you just write?

You need to look at the dates on the £700 bill. It should be a closing bill for service up to March 2009 with the closing reading you passed in March 2009. OK, you need to tell me if its not and if it includes an estimated (or even actual) recent reading then the account has not been closed. In that case it may be one person's word against another regarding the March 2009 contact. If that is the case I would strongly recommend you attempt to obtain the current reading. The worst case scenario would be liability for supply from Feb 2009 to present and not too much gas unless the heating has been left on high.

Sound out Npower about your alleged Mar 2009 contact and note what they say.

Post their response and date and reading details from the £700 bill.

Just one last thing if you're unsatisfied by Npower's repsonse request a written copy of their complaints procedure and ensure your dissatisfaction/complaint is recorded, then read the document thoroughly and prepare to follw every step to the letter.