Tale of Two Energy Suppliers

[dave]

long but true

Just over a year ago I started receiving letters address to a Mr Ivan Anger (!) at my home address at No 345. These were from NPowder - a well know supplier of energy. As I am with British Gaz, and do not know of a Mr Anger in our street I marked the envelope "not at this address" and put it back in the post box. But more letters arrived address to Mr Anger. I called NPowder several times and was assured the error was going to be corrected and it would "work itself out". Of course it didn't. I even called BritGaz just in case they knew anything - they didn't.

I decided to open one of these letters to see if I could discover the mysterious Mr Anger - but no clue there, except it seems he had used uSwatch to change his supplier. All was proceeding well for Mr Anger, and NPowder were "delighted" to send him this good news every few weeks or so. I decided to sweep the street to find Mr Anger (we live in a very long road) - and eventually found he lived at number 346 - next door! Well not quite. The houses are staggered and physically his house was several away from us and the opposite side of the road. He was surprised as he was getting letters from NPowder himself and the transferred gaz account was "working fine" for him. He promised to call them up - and I told him the background to this.

Anyway, he came around a few weeks later to tell me he'd called them and they sai it "would work itself out" ha ha ha. "Thanks very much" I said - but the letters continued to arrive. I regularly treated myself to a short morning walk to deliver them to him. "I'll ask to speak to the supervisor" he said optimistically one day. And I'm sure he did but still etc etc.

Now it really gets interesting (not). Late last year, when GritGas announced it's annual rip-off prices I decided what the hell, I'll see what uSwatch have to say. Temped by the fabulous fortune I was going to save I decided to switch to NPowder myself, and did so online. (can you see what it is yet).

The usual glowing letters of Nirvana arrived telling me how wonderful things would be once their computers had raised two bytes to BritGaz's computers.

I waited... and waited and then one day, in glorious A4 a letter arrived from NPowder. In excitement and expectation I tore open the envelope, and fumbled the letter to reveal the proclamation...

...

GOOD NEWS! YOUR APPLICATION TO SWITCH TO NPOWDER HAS DISCOVERED THAT YOU ARE ALREADY A CUSTOMER OF NPOWDER SO THERE IS NOTHING MORE YOU NEED TO DO.

(Maybe call the Ombudsman & tell them I missed out on a fabulous deal :-) )

[Dave Liquorice]

Does it have a date from when you became an nPower customer? If not write to them and get that date in writing along with the tariff details. Then check the tariff against what you have paid British Gas, if the nPower is less then wave that letter under British Gas's nose and claim your refund plus interest at 8% above base rate for the payments made to them when you wern't their customer. Quietly start paying nPower if they ever decide to bill you...

Be aware it probably will, eventually, catch up with you so be prepared to cough up or at least come to an arrangement.

[fred]

In article , Martin Brown writes

I've recently helped someone out on a switch and on a whim I decided to take a look at separate providers for gas and elec which brought more savings than a dual provider by using 2 small scale independents, Daligas and isupply energy. I've found energylinx.com to be one of the more reliable comparison sites for energy switches.

[Brian Gaff]

Ah, you are proabably annonimised inside the system, with similar annon numbers I expect. They do this to protect you, so you should be grateful!

Brian

[bert]

In message , Brian Gaff writes

Unlike the care.data system in which large numbers of people will be fairly easily identified.