Evil NPOWER have got the bailiffs after us for money we owe on a gas bill - only problem is we're not bloody with them!

[YouKnowNothingOfTheCrunch]

We are completely up to date with our bills, Southern Electric supply both electricity and gas. Now we have received a bill for our property from the date we moved in last year and a letter from the baliffs!

Have called Npower who say there is a note on the account saying that when we moved in we changed supplier. They say they'll look into it and a freeze has been put on the account.

My reaction? What bloody account!?

So, what are the legalities here? I thought it was illegal for a company to open an account without your permission (and certainly not with express wishes not to). Am mightily pssed off, have spent hours on the phone after this AND had Npower representative bully his way into my home telling me we are* with them.

Any help appreciated. Thanks!

NPower are quite good at fucking up like this. They sent us our neighbours bills for a while because they had the wrong meter number

Ask them to send you a copy of the contract you signed and if they can't do that to go forth and multiply.

It is bloody irritating though isn't it. You need to get formal WRITTEN confirmation that they have amended your credit rating to say they fucked up though.

You might find that the previous tenants/owner had an account with them. I had this last year, previous tenant had an account with Scottish Power and it takes 4-6 weeks to change supplier. Our new supplier said we couldn't change to them as Scottish Power had frozen our account - and we didn't even have an account with SP as far as I knew! There was a balance owing from when we moved in to when the supplier change went through. Could this be the same for you?

First I would ring up your supplier adn see if they can provide NPower with a letter to prove they have been providing your gas and that you have been paying them for it (get them to send it to you and you send it on to NPower, asking for sig so have proof of receipt).

If your supplier won't do that, then copy all your statements from them adn send (asking for sig) them to NPower.

If that doesn't work, call energy watch who are the trading standards for this kinda thing

Helpline: 08459 06 07 08

Thank you! Previous tenants are friends of ours and the account was definitely paid in full. They're trying to get us to pay for the gas supplied since. We've lived her for 8 months now and this has only been going on just over a month, so it seems rather random.

Hadn't even thought about our credit rating! Dammit. Scumbags the lot of them.

We had a problem when we switched supplier. They sent out a meter reader who reported back to the new supplier. Somewhere along the line the old supplier didn't get confirmation of the switch so carried on billing us. We were getting two bills for the same supply. Makes you wonder how they work it out, doesn't it? After all, we weren't receiving two amounts of energy so someone was billing us for power they hadn't supplied. Took us a while to sort it out, but we did get it sorted.

I now ask the meter reader who has instructed him (as they read for a number of different companies) and if they say anything different from our supplier, I send them away.