jacksback1:

So how anyone can say this is not a scam I don't know,,

It's certainly not satisfactory to get a "take it or leave it letter" that the customer feels rightly or wrongly is "intuitively" wrong. That's inept customer service and sufficent grounds for you to decide to excercise your rights to switch.

In the last month I got my Scottish Power review. It was provided online immediately after I submitted a meter reading approximately 12 months after the previous review. For various reasons including a reduced tariff and energy efficiency measures, the monthly payment was reduced to within a pound or two of what I expected. There was a partial explanation. It may or may not be relevent that it's SP who are paying interest on credit balances. I emailed for a better explanation and got a very full explanation, with another pound knocked off which I hadn't asked for or expected, so its entirely possible for a full explanation to be provided.

Rather than rant about scams why not ask Eon for a detailed explanation. They may or may not comply. If they don't comply you have learned something to your advantage about their customer service standards. That would something worth bringing to this forum and possibly grounds for a customer service standard penalty payment.

In the absence of tariff and consumption details which you haven't posted it's possible that in the last 12 months your rates have increased, either through being on a variable tariff or coming off a very competitive fixed tariff.

Whatever, go and look for the reason. Make sure you ask and they inform you the annual consumption basis for the calculation because that is the key to getting an accurate comparison or accurate payments when you switch.

As far as I know only Scottish Power have announced this policy.

Well it would seem to be in your case that it was incredibly bad customer service. As long as you are in credit, the customer service representative has no right to refuse to decrease your DD unless their calculations show that you will end up with a debit balance.

I would phone them back, demand that they refund all but a safety margin of credit to you immediately (don't settle for cheque, demand BACS). Also state that unless they comply with the law you will be contacting Consumer Focus.

I enter readings onto my Eon account every month,, therefore it is easy to calculate my usage and yet for the whole of last year I never had a debit balance even in the winter and yet I received a letter increasing my payments!! I telephoned and was told they would leave it as it was (very good of them!) The next month I received the same letter again telling me they were they were increasing my payments!! So how anyone can say this is not a scam I don't know,, unless you check your readings constantly and calculate the payments yourself you are likely to be paying to much,, at one point I had a £600 credit balance and they still want to increase my payments!!

Who are these companies paying interest on credit balances???????? I would be rich :)

Having previously worked for the power companies, i would like nothing more than to join you in calling them evil. However, in this case i can't.

The entire reason the power companies tend to over estimate your direct debits is not, as you claim, a secret cabal of power companies conspiring to rid you of extra money.

The actual reason, is that the power companies are bound by the regulators to have a moral responsibility to their customers. This means that they have to prevent all means of knowingly allowing someone to fall into debt with their bills.

The problem here is actually that, as you know, people use more in the winter than they do in the summer. Therefore, your direct debit has to be based on an average years consumption, rather than a few months. This is why your DD is recalculated every six months, and takes your previous annual consumption into account. When you couple that with fluctuations in energy prices, then your DD is at best an educated guess.

You can of course help the situation by supplying monthly reads to the power companies. The system they have is far from perfect, however it is not helped when all they have to go on is estimated readings.

It should be noted that some power companies are now offering to pay you back £1 of interest for every £3 that they have in credit balance for you. So it doesn't seem so likely that they're trying to fund their companies by deliberately taking extra money now, does it?

zefram:They recalculated and came up with a new figure of £107 which I declined, then they recalculated again and came up with a figure of £70 - so that is down from £156 to £70 with 3 phone calls. So how can this not be a scam!

I'm not going to defend NPower, but the question of whether its a "scam" or not depends on the reason why there are three different figures with three phone calls. In the absence of consumption and tariff information which you have not posted its impossible to say it's not just a chaotic billing system and/or customer service incompetence. Or the reason I suggested in my previous post.

However it would be a good service to your fellow consumers to prove that it was a "scam" and take a complaint to Ofgem rather than to just rant.

They recalculated and came up with a new figure of £107 which I declined, then they recalculated again and came up with a figure of £70 - so that is down from £156 to £70 with 3 phone calls. So how can this not be a scam!

zefram:.

I know what my annual consumption is and £59 covers it, I also gave them a meter reading every few months to try and make it all more accurate

.

I'm fully in favour of customers exercising their right to switch, preferably for financial reasons but also to penalise customer service reasons if they choose.

The NPower FAQ here http://www.npower.com/web/At_home/customer_service/yourquestionsanswered/faq_dd_5

explains their "policy" (which may not be what they have applied for reasons unknown). While your concerns about being "scammed" are perfectly reasonable there is such a mismatch between a payment which you think covers your annual consumption and the payment being demanded there must be another reason.

Why not ask them to explain the calculation, and then test the calculation against the FAQ. The mid-term review explicitly says the aim is to achieve "zero-balance at the annual review" (though I note the annual review makes no similar explicit claim).

Their calculation is either right or wrong tested against their own FAQ. If you think it's wrong and they won't explain, rough them up through their complaints procedure. Then switch.

Later edit:

If NPower have done an "mid-term" review then their demanded payment could easily be right and fully in accordance with the objective to achieve "zero balance" in 6 months time after the winter period. I also wonder if you are still on a NPower tariff featuring "seasonal weighting" a particularly nasty NPower "gotcha" which loads cost onto the already heavy winter season.

The NPower "mid-term review" makes a nonsense of annual fixed monthly direct debit. Most other suppliers have a genuine annual review. A good enough reason to switch.

My payment should not change, the previous year I was £80 in credit and got a cheque or bank credit for that amount. So the account was zero at the start of the year. I know what my annual consumption is and £59 covers it, I also gave them a meter reading every few months to try and make it all more accurate, the new direct debit debit amounts are always so heavily weighted in their favour that it is a 'scam', no other word can describe it, a lot of people just accept the new payments and that is why they do it.

zefram:[

- ex npower customer.

I'm not going to defend NPower or the way that some suppliers spring and re-calculate DD payments but I hope I can prevent you cutting off your nose to spite your face.

What do you think the new payment should be and why?

If you do a price comparison, in most areas Npower offer a tariff which is consistently cheapest. This is predicated on a sizeable discount paid annually in arrears. So if you still want to switch, it may be best to delay until just after receiving your annual discount.

Switching is the best way of getting an accurate DD payment as long as you know fairly accurately your annual consumption. Would have been interesting if you had posted that information.

In the absence of sufficient information I can only speculate why they have imposed such a large increase when you are in credit. Possible reasons, not excluding feathering their nest as you suspect, are you have been using up a previous credit balance, energy prices have increased and/or you have just finished a fixed price term or you have not yet earned your annual discount.

That is why I suggest if you really want to scr*w Npower, don't do it until you have earned your discount.

npower advice:

there is no such thing as a direct debit scam thats for sure !

ROFL - I have duel fuel and was paying £59 last year, my account is £11 in credit and I have just had a new direct debit of £156 - no scam - you are joking!!!! The woman on the phone even had the nerve to say it was because winter was coming, but don't we have one every year and was that not covered by my £59 payments before - npower are a joke - ex npower customer.

ros684:

Hi I am with npower aswell and I got a huge bill in the other day for £357.

The most important thing you can do is to make sure you have a bill based on an accurate meter reading. Is this electricity or dual fuel? £357 must be the bill debit balance. The fact that it was reduced by £57 indicates the readings must have been estimated so make sure accurate readings are provided.

Even if it is reduced to £300 that is still big debit balance. Hardly surprising that nPower want to see it reduced and £107 doesn't seen unreasonable.

Hi I am with npower aswell and I got a huge bill in the other day for £357. I noticed that I had hnot had a bill since last August so I called up to complain and got £57 knocked off straight away. I then got another bill for more money and I called again and none of the people I spoke to have a clue what is going on. To cover this bill they have increased my direct debit to £107 a month from £50! So I have asked them to reduce it to £78.

Ros

Last year our Dual Fuel monthly DirectDebit to NPOWER was £87. In January NPOWER increased this to £232 without any warning. This is for a four bedroom detached house.

Time to read my meters and give them an update!!!!

OK how about this: Last May Npower made an incorrect reading, by about 6000 units or aout £800. This is now "sorted out". Bills recalculated back to 2005, they used an initial reading of 27623. Fortunately I had my bill from 2005 showing initial reading of 30150, They actually owed me £428.44. So if I had not kept four year old records they might have got £250 odd out of me? Who in Npower came up with the number of 27623? Why? Were they trying it on?

They should be correct and accurate, and bearing in mind with an average of well over 5 million customers per company, for the large percentage of the time, they are..

There are obvious things which could alter the calculations used or be factors in them, (ie estimated readings, historical usage, seasonal differences, balance of your account, price changes) but unfortunately it does just sometimes come down to the fact that the computers given the task can get it wrong or develop errors.

Its not great I know, and not the answer you were looking for, but mistakes happen in everything and nothing in life works perfectly 100% of the time. The main thing is you contacted them and they (I assume) corrected it.

It really doesn't make sense for a company to come up with "spurious" amounts deliberately, then write to tell you what the changes will be as this will invite complaints, which they will try to avoid at all costs. Complaints cost money, time, customers, and reputation. Despite poor publicity recently with rising energy costs, they really aren't out to get you.