Thursday, September 07, 2006

Do you have a degree in incompetence?

are you being rude mr iddon?
no, i was asking a question, do you have a degree in incompetence, because your colleague clearly does.

Why am I so irate? Well nPower that is why. I have been using their electricty for about three years now and pay monthly, getting a statement every quarter informing me if I am paying enough/too much. This quarter I get a statement saying I owe in the order of £300, which is obviously concerning. It is an estimated reading, so i go and check the meter. The estimate is miles out, in fact it turns out their meter guy last read the meter in may, so four months ago, in which time their estimation algorithm has calculated that I have since used nearly twice as much electricity as I have ever used from them. In four months. So I rang and told them, and whilst I was at it I told them my gas reading too. As I had given them an accurate reading I asked them to update me on what my current account would be so that I could see if i needed to adjust my monthly payments. I'm sorry sir I can't do that. Why not, I've just told you the meter reading? You will get your statement in a few days. But I would like to know now whilst I am speaking to you. And so I have to work it out by hand with him, as all the required info is on the bill, price per kW etc. Why it can't automatically calculate it is beyond me. Well, I think that the whole charade is over.

Until today


my new statement arrives


Now it says I have used even more electricty, unbelievable, so hence my question today when the guy from nPower answers. In the meantime, whilst waiting on the phone forever, I realise that the idiot I was speaking to a few days ago has only gone and entered my gas meter reading in the electricity bill.

This isn't the first time nPower have shown incompetance, my friend changed his supplier to Southern electric, all sorted etc. Three months later he gets his bill from southern electric, then a week later gets a bill from nPower for the same period, despite the fact that he no longer uses them as a supplier.

So anyone googling for nPower, hope you come across this, their customer support is useless as they only hire people who are either stupid or don't listen properly, or both.

Utility companies - bah!

1 comment:

Alastair said...

Had the same problem on the same day last week - should never have stopped using Ecotricity, it was just that my wife was fooled by the 'we won't increase our prices and we really are quite green' spiel that she got from some sales bod in Cambridge. Very tempted to switch back to green tariff with scottish electric or ecotricity.