UK energy firm Npower faces ban on tele-sales for inflated bills

20 Jun 2014

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Hundreds of thousands of UK families might  have to shell out huge sums to pay huge gas and electricity bills 'out of the blue', the energy watchdog Ofgem revealed today.

The regulator's report slammed the big six energy firm Npower for running up a backlog of  400,000 unprocessed bills.

The backlog had left families reeling under a 'bill shock' - where they would need to find hundreds of pounds to pay a large bill that was served out of the blue.

The regulator said in a warning that non-clearance of the bill could end in the company being banned from trying to win more customers using its telephone sales team.

According to energy secretary Ed Davey, it was 'unacceptable that so many Npower customers had not received the customer service they deserve'

According to Ofgem, Npower had to resolve the issue by the end of August or have its telephone sales unit shut down, which would amount to a ban on cold calling.

The regulator added Npower would need to meet monthly targets to reduce the number of accounts affected by late billing from around 400,000 today to 100,000 over the next three months.

The ultimatum came after Ofgem said it had grown ''increasingly concerned about [Npower's] slow progress to tackle failings.''

The company had been hit with more complaints than any of its rivals since the end of 2012.

The company would now need to reduce the number of households affected by late billing from the current level of 400,000 to 100,000 by the end of August.

The regulator added that its analysis of complaints data had raised ''some serious concerns which will be thoroughly examined'', warning it could face a fine if it had broken the rules.

Npower supplies power to 7 million households or 15 per cent of the market, but a computer glitch while switching to a new billing system had led to errors in the treatment of some 700,000 household accounts.

 

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