Npower apologises for bill errors

Npower has been forced to apologise to customers after making a number of significant billing errors.

Npower has apologised to its 3.4 million customers for letting them down over poor customer service and errors with a new billing system.

The failure to install a new billing system correctly led to a range of errors, from bills not being sent out on time to issues with direct debits being set up.

It has promised that no customer will lose out financially as a result. The firm will donate £1 million to its own crisis fund which pays out money to vulnerable customers.

Rise in complaints

Npower has had an awful year for customer service. Between April and June this year the company received 202.5 complaints per 100,000 customers. This is the largest of any of the energy companies. By comparison Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) received just 38.3 complaints per 100,000 customers.

Npower also came bottom of a survey by Which? earlier this year which looked at customer satisfaction, racking up an overall customer score of just 39%, compared to 85% for the best company, Good Energy. And in our own lovemoney Awards npower was nowhere to be seen.

The energy giant has introduced a price hike of 10.4%, the highest of the Big Six, which came into force last weekend.

Getting your money back

If you’re an npower customer and you’ve been affected by recent errors, you should not lose out. It has taken on 800 extra staff who will be contacting customers if their energy bills have been miscalculated.

But even if you’re not contacted, if you think something might be wrong with your bills, the best thing to do is contact the company directly.

Read How to complain about your energy supplier.

Another route you could take is switching energy companies. Read How to switch energy supplier.

Switch to a better provider

With the exception of E.ON, all the Big Six providers have now announced price hikes. However, there is still some difference between the price of tariffs so if you’ve not yet switched, you could save money by doing so.

When looking at price alone, Co-operative Energy is the cheapest supplier with the Fixed Price to 31 March 2015 tariff. This costs an average of £1,168 per year, which is £323 cheaper than the average bill amount. Ovo, First Utility, E.ON and Green Star Energy all feature in the cheapest tariffs on offer as you can see in the table below.

* based on typical gas and electricity bill for someone who has never switched costing £1,420 (Source: OFGEM 2013) uplifted by 5% for recent price rises henc £1,491 pa. Source: Energyhelpline.com, 2/12/13. 2. All calculations are for an average usage dual fuel household paying by monthly direct debit. Average usage as defined by OFGEM is 16,500 kWh pa of gas and 3,300 kWh pa of electricity.

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