Npower fined £60,000 for persistent nuisance calls

British Gas also kept making nuisance calls to me last year. They had sent a first bill but not a red second bill although they claimed they had but they hadn't (I was in the middle of examinations at the time) and then kept on calling and calling (with a human caller who was verbally extremely threatening - I live on my own and found this very harrowing) - probably in the region of 10 times in one day. I told them I was in the middle of working but they would not stop calling and I had even told them on numerous occasions to take my phone number off their list and not to phone me at home. In the end I had to threaten to take matters to my solicitor. I have never failed to pay a bill and have been with the company for about 30 years so they had plenty of back records to look at. They then took to using abandoned calls which at first I answered and even phoned the number back and told them again not to phone me at home. These have now ceased of late, no doubt due to the above ruling. I suspect these calls have been used country-wide. I would say that £60,000 is not enough but the more they are fined the more they will pass it on to customers. I think that offending companies should be put into liquidation if they make these unsolicited and threatening calls (and by the way I own some Centrica/BG shares - yes I want to earn a dividend but don't believe in hounding people - they can take persistent non-payers to court).

Npower should be banned from trading, and, in my opinion, some of its execs should be jailed. Some members of my family were harassed for non-payment of bills by this company's debt collectors. Before you say they should pay their bills, I will point out that their property was not supplied by Npower, nor had it ever been. Nonetheless, they were threatening to cut off the power supply to the house, even though a two-year-old child was living there. My family asked me to sort it out. So I spent two-thirds of a whole day on the phone trying to get through to their so-called customer care department. Luckily I had the sense to telephone through their sales department, which is an 0800 number. After continually speaking to people who were either surly or sounded as though they had just been smacked over the head with a sledgehammer, I was finally put through to a manager. When I told her that Npower did not actually supply the property in question, she slammed the phone down. I also got to speak to Npower's debt collectors. And when their own debt collectors are moaning about them, then you know you ought to switch suppliers, even if it will cost you a little more. If you are supplied by someone else, avoid Npower.

@css: "Most of the Multi Nationals or Nationals are very crooked with hidden agendas" It would be interesting to hear you substantiate that ridiculous statement. The only agenda I see is maximise profits, (partly by minimising taxation) and raise the share price (and therefore the value of the company). Not very hidden and not crooked either.