I DONOT F*****G BELIVE THIS

[NuttyMuffins]

As many of you know, I pay for my gas and electric on pre payment meters. I have a card fopr each machine, and I put £5 or £10 credit on them a week.

I was sick of not being able to get credit due to machines not working and so I rang Npower and asked if I culd have it changed, they agreed and someone was due out tody.

So about 1pm a bloke knocks the door and says he can't do my meter as there is a technical fault. Wasn't best pleased, but he said someone might be out later or tommorow so I said fine and he left.

Fast forward to 4 o clock, and another van apperas and out gets a rather more officla looking bloke and work mate. He knocks the door, I answer, and he asks me how long I have lived here, neraly 3 years replies me, why ?? Because the meter has been tampered with and guess who is prime suspect number 1 ?? ME.

I obviously tells the bloke I had no clue it had been tampered with, and that I put credit on it regularly etc and he has said that yeah thats great but on Monday I have to ring my energy supplier and try and convince them I knew nothing about it. They will have record of all of my payments but because i sometimes only put small amounts on apparently I could have just been doing that to make it look like i didn't know.

I asked him why I would call someone out to change my meter if I knew it had been tampered with. Basically all it is is a red wire that comes out of one hole in the bottom of the meter and goes into another hole (yep that easy). Yes i knew the wire was there, but how the hell was I to know it shouldn't be there. If i had done it, then i'd have removed it wouldn't I, not left it in for electric bloke to see.

He said the fact that it has been 3 years isn't good and he also questioned wether the meter had been read, which is obviously has as I get statements. He said the meter reader should of noticed it but they didn't. So in 3 years not one meter reader has spotted this. If they don't know what a tampered machine looks like how the hell would I ?

I have to ring Npower on monday and they will then decide wether I have comitted the offence. If they decide I have then I have to pay for the visit from the bloke today, damage to the old machine and any electric they think I have had but not paid for.
Oh and they now won't change my meter to a normal one until this is all sorted out. I had to have another pre payment meter installed or have my electric cut off.

So yet again, here I am with a battle on my hand to prove I am not guilty of something.

I am so fucking sick of all this shit.

have you tried ringing either of these numbers?
If you are experiencing a fault with your prepayment meter please call 08456 00 55 88*. If you live in Yorkshire please call 0800 073 3273.

taken from the npower website..I was amused at their slogan.."putting customers first"

How much have you on the emergency?

It was the pre payment dept I spoke to Kaliedescope, but thanks for that anyway.

CC, I have about £4 which before would of lasted about 3 days but now will probably only last 2 if that.

That wire> im guessing you would have to move it back and forth to get the free elecyy? it wouldnt just half billed and half not. So your eleccy shouldnt be costing that much more surely?
Hopefully it will last you till monday. What a frigging disaster.

I dunno CC, have no clue, but as soon as it gets down to £1 they will have to send someone out.

Update : Rang Npower this morning and explained what happened on friday and they knew nothing about it but said that there was no problem as I had been putting credit on the machine regularly. I wasn't totally convinced that the woman i was talking to, understood what I was on about though.
Anyhow, she put me through to get another appointment to have a normal meter fitted and I explained it again to another woman and she said that there was a note on my file to say that a tampered machine had been removed, but it let her book an appointment for a credit machine, which she said it would not have done had they been thinking I was responsible for the tampering. She said it was quite clear that I had always put credit on the meter since day 1 and that it was obvious that it was the previous occupants that had done the tampering.

So I think thats it, although I won't be completely surprised if I still get a letter or something about it, think it will depend wether one dept speaks to the other.

Still need to run this meter down to £1 anmd get an engineer to come and give me a new card though.

What a total nightmare and PITA Nutty. Hope it gets sorted for you.

Sorry you are having all these problems, nuttymuffins. I won't go near Npower with a barge pole, as have had bad experience of them, but I realise this may not be an option to change. Hope it works out

Well, I hope that's it sorted for you, nutty. You really do have to jump through hoops for the simplest of things, don't you?

blimey nutty, what stupid useless twats they are!!

Glad it all nearly sorted anyway.

(sorry i missed yo the other day on msn....but glad thats all sorted too. time wasting twats there too by the sound of it!)

oh god I house I lived in had this done, its called a horseshoe. We were lucky as we had only been there a couple of months when we phoned to ask someone to check it as we could see a wire sticking out and didnt know what it was. I am sorry nutty you do seem to have had a lot of shit happen lately [[[[[[[[hugs]]]]]

Yeah thats what this was Nemo, but cos the wire wasn't very long or anything, it just never occured to me that it shouldn't be there. There were 2 more wires at the back which were meant to be there, so I just thought it was normal.

Thankfully the people at Npower seem to have some sense and realised that I wouldn't bother putting credit on it if I had tampered with it.
I even walked bloody miles on new years day to find a shop open to put credit on the card, wouldn't have bothered if it were me would I.

Hopefully thats the end of it anyway, and hopefully no more shit will come my way