OVO +1

Npower awful.

I am afraid that some (most!) power companies have really got incredibly incompetent.

I look after our local church and our local railway museum and the problems we have had are almost beyond belief.

At the Church we got a smart meter installed and well they couldn't get a reading. They said the radio mast was too far away. 300 meters! They need to get a meter reader at £25 plus Vat every month to check the meter at our cost!! We read the meter and send it in but they bill a totally wrong amount. Reading multiplied by 10 times! Then they say we are £800 in credit but they cannot return it as they cannot get an up to date reading. Taken the previous day is not recent enough!!

At the Museum they fitted a smart meter and again they couldn't read it. May take a year to work they said (Honestly?) Billed us for £230, we checked the meter and the usage is £2.20. We sent in a photo of the meter readings and they said OH! those meter don't work correctly so your cost is £1.36

A local company is on smart meter number 4 and the electricity supplier has said it may have to be changed again as it doesn't register the correct usage.

You couldn't invent it!

I've been helping my son do up his house, mainly him earning money at work, while I slave in the house making an endless list of defects good.

Anyway been my first exposure in years to trying to get stuff done by a utility, and I was amazed at how complicated it's become as soon as you need something a little non-standard. My grief was caused by the previous occupant not only choosing to stop using gas, but also having the meter removed, damaging the box, and other unfortunate decisions.

When I were a lad, pretty much everything Gas related was provided by the Gas Board (later British Gas) and it was pretty clear who did what. There was a simple relationship between customer and supplier.

Now Utilities have been privatised unusual requirements are liable to become complicated because several companies have to be coordinated. It isn't a team, and there is no single neck to squeeze if anything goes wrong. In my son's case the heating installer was one company, who sub-contracted the work; replacing the consumer box we eventually found to be the property owners job, and we had to find a gas fitter to do the work; the pipes in the street belong to a distribution company, and the meter belongs to the energy supplier, who also used a subcontractor to fit it.

The new system is straightforward provided the customer has a simple requirement that can be satisfied by the basic call-centre/website route, but that interface disintegrates as soon as a conversation is necessary, and it's doubly difficult if the customer doesn't know the ropes. Confused customer trying to explain to a confused call-centre operative, who may not be the right one and probably doesn't know what the other companies are doing anyway. Not as bad as herding cats, but it felt like it! Fork handles or four candles galore.

Curiously the best performer was Octopus, but only after getting past their friendly but script-following call-centre to a supervisor who understood the problem. Curious, because Octopus are an Energy Provider, not a Supplier. They buy gas and electricity wholesale and sell retail, hopefully at bargain prices and have few practical responsibilities. They don't own any gas or electrical infrastructure themselves. I expected the hands-on guys to be good at sorting it out, but it seems they don't do 'management'. No complaints whatever about the quality of work once they arrived, but getting them to the starting post was a challenge!

Delighted to say telephone, ISP, water, and electricity were no bother at all. Unlike Gas, they were a standard house move change and it was all done smoothly online.

Covid and maybe the new border controls are causing bother too: parts shortages, delivery delays, and waiting lists even when jobs are an essential emergency. My plan fell apart and being forced by circumstances to do things in the wrong order multiplied the work. Not a happy bunny! Nearly there though!

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 30/03/2021 15:46:27

Green Energy, best communicator I've used and we generate as well as use so that is important to me. I get an email every quarter to remind me to send the generated reading in and because I use my Tesco credit card (points!) to pay every month I get a reminder to send the readings in for that. On the odd occasion I have rung them they were very helpful and polite.

**LINK**