POWER to the people!
CHRISTOPHER Loveland is confused by the latest correspondence from npower – a company still struggling with the legacy of a billing system thrown into chaos last year.
A bill sent this month relating to 2013 warns him that his monthly payments will be adjusted to £1,113 for his three-bedroom, semi-detached home.
But on the last page of the same bill – ironically under the subheading of ‘how your statement adds up’ – it suggests that Chris, 31, is in fact owed £1,113. The bill arrived in the same envelope as two others, one demanding a monthly payment of £180 and another a final payment of £264. The personnel manager from Solihull, West Midlands, calls npower’s service a ‘joke’.
The supplier admits its service to Chris was below standard and, because of the delay in sending him a bill, he will be eligible for a debt reduction under the back-billing policy whereby a supplier cannot charge for energy used more than 12 months ago if it failed to send bills on time.
Meanwhile, 25 miles away in Walsall, hotel worker Laura Norton is equally unimpressed with npower, which took a year to set up an account at her address between 2012 and 2013.
On the plus side, the company wrote off some of the charges relating to that year, but Laura, 28, was still confused by later bills, and felt her queries went unheard.
She says: ‘Npower’s complaints department needs a new approach. The correspondence is shocking and leaves customers feeling unhappy and neglected.’
A spokesman for npower told The Mail on Sunday: ‘We are really sorry to hear about both Laura and Christopher’s queries and we have taken the necessary steps to resolve each complaint.’
It said that Laura’s debts had been wiped clean as a ‘gesture of goodwill’.