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...