How It All Began...

I originally joined Npower in October 2006 after becoming increasingly annoyed with the lack of customer focus I experienced as a British Gas customer, little did I realise that I was jumping out of the proverbial frying pan straight into the (gas powered) fire! For the first 2 years there were no problems, I was billed quarterly with what seemed to be the correct seasonal amounts and I duly paid those bills.
I did not take regular meter readings as I assumed a company that sold gas to millions of customers would be reasonably trustworthy or at least slightly accurate when it came to billing for usage as well as the fact that my gas meter is locked in a shed only my neighbours have the key for, which makes the task far less simple than it should be: More fool me.
On the 4th Febraury 2009 I recieved the estimated bill for winter 2008/2009 running from 15th October 2008 to 15th Jan 2009, the invoice was for £125.17 and my minds eye assumed this was about the correct rate for 3 months usage in my 1 bedroom 2nd floor flat. Then on 10th February 2009 I recieved an amended bill for winter, the dates this time were 15th October 2008 - 3rd Febraury 2009, totalling a staggering £395.71 which is approximately 3.5 times the size of the largest bill i had recieved in the 2 years previously and was the first since inception of my account based on an actual meter reading by Npower engineers and so began by nightmare dealing with N Power...

Phone Call 22nd July 2009

So this morning I was rung up by an N Power representative after my hour long conversation with them on Monday this week. The lady who's name I failed to catch was completely unhelpful telling me over and over again that their systems didn't have the facility to accept a £35 a month payment against my old bill, instead insisting I had to pay £70 a month which would go against the new bills as well. I explained that I was not happy with this arrangement and I also didn't have the facilities to be able to make payments against the new bills in this manner and that they should continue to send the news ones through on a quarterly basis which would then be paid as normal. This was too much to grasp for the poor woman and she couldn't agree to it which I find amazing as most companies are pre-disposed to agree to payment plans when they are offered and I was very suprised that she turned it down.
Typical N Power though, she contradicted herself numerous times throughout the conversation as well as contradicted her colleagues I had spoken to on previous occasions all of which goes to re-inforce my beliefs that N Power are a money grabbing, joke of a corporation. No one who I have spoken to on the phone on recent months has done the slightest thing to help me out and as a customer not only do I find it shocking but also very frustrating whereas they don't even understand its causing me considerable grief.

Long and short is - only use N Power for your gas and electricity if you want to the anally raped and then discarded like you're worthless by a massive corporation.