Anyone else found npower to be the worst energy provider?

Question

not just in terms of prices but customer (dis)service and the fact that they are rather fond of hanging on to the money they owe you

Answer 1

You are a very smart man i was thinking of it today i am not kidding...Well Npower has been officially named "Britain's worst energy provider" after presiding over a 21% increase in complaints over the past 12 months.

Consumer group Energywatch says the gas and electricity supplier, which sponsors Test cricket in England, has taken its eye off the ball. It says npower is now the most complained-about company in terms of billing, selling and transferring customers. It was also named as the "worst" gas supplier.

Energywatch says that over the last year, complaints about every other power company fell or stayed virtually the same. However customer "contacts", as the group calls complaints, about npower rose by 21%.

Audrey Gallacher, Energywatch's head of company performance, says consumer contacts about energy suppliers have fallen overall, largely due to British Gas's recovery after its "customer service meltdown" in 2006/07.

"Npower has managed to buck the trend in a spectacular way. The company needs to take urgent remedial action across a whole range of areas, and Energywatch will be working closely with npower to assist their recovery."

The group's figures show that Scottish & Southern Energy retained its spot as the least complained-about company. British Gas, which performed worst in recent years, saw the biggest drop in complaints - down by almost half. Despite that, it still suffers more than six times as many complaints as SSE.

Npower was the first to increase its prices last autumn, and attracted a host of negative headlines by imposing some of the highest price hikes.

Earlier this year, Guardian Money revealed that the firm had apparently overcharged many of its customers after changing the way it calculated monthly payments - an issue that is yet to be resolved by the regulator Ofgem. A Sunday newspaper recently published a report claiming that some of its door-to-door sales staff were employing dubious selling techniques.

A spokesman for npower blamed the big jump in complaints on the introduction of a new computer system. "For the last five years we have seen a year-on-year drop in the number of complaints, but this year we have begun to see a rise - and we're sorry if some of our customers have not received good service. We have just moved all of our customers on to our best billing system. This was a huge task and, inevitably, there have been some issues, which we are now addressing.

"We are investing an extra £2m in our customer service area, and we have already allocated an extra 120 advisors to deal with complex and lengthy complaints or queries, and will be recruiting a further 130 to help us improve."

· Scottish Power this week withdrew the price-capped product highlighted in Guardian Money a few weeks ago. Those who signed up got a great deal. If you missed out, it is not too late to grab a capped price offer. Mark Todd, of energyhelpline.com, says Eon's price protection tariff, which caps prices until October 2009, is currently the one to go for. "You'll pay a 13% premium over the current cheapest online deals, but not much more than Eon's standard tariff," he says