NPower and the National Grid are crap

NPower and the National Grid are crap

The day before yesterday, sometime in the late afternoon, my gas supply went off. I discovered this when I went to put a Cornish pasty in the gas oven for my tea. As I had recently put £20 on my gas card, in my view, it could not have run out that quickly. I pressed the red button on the gas meter, to see if the credit had expired, however, nothing showed up on the meter in the little plastic window. The meter had ceased. It had expired. It was a dead meter. I phoned NPower, who informed me to phone the National Grid. They said nobody could come out, even though I was with out hot water, heating, and gas to operate the gas cooker. I was livid and cold and hungry! The best they said they could do was send someone out between 8am and 2pm the next day.

The engineer from the National Grid arrived about 9.30am. Upon inspection of the meter, he said: "The batteries are dead". It's the first I knew that there were any batteries in them. And, my thought was 'What's the point in having batteries which suddenly go dead in the middle of Winter and leave you with out the service I had paid for?'. The engineer replaced the batteries, but the meter was still dead as a Dodo! He said: "The meter's dead". Followed by: "I will have to replace it with a new one". I asked: "What about the credit I have on the old meter?". He replied: "I will put you £10 credit on the new one". I said, "I am sure I had more on the old one". Then I asked: "What about my gas card?". He said it will still work with my new meter. I asked how often these meters breakdown, and he replied "all the time they are crap, crap company!". Within the last hour I had to put another £10 on my gas card, because it had eaten up £7 since yesterday. When I put the card in the meter, there was a high pitched whine and I was informed, "Card not accepted"!

I am very pissed off with both NPower and the National Grid for this shitty service. I should still not be on a meter anyway because my back debts on both gas and electric have been paid off. I phoned NPower and was not chuffed by the responses to say the least! The operator said it was not an emergency because my gas had not run out. I said it would before the evening was out going by the £7 it took out of the £10 since yesterday. He said that the National Grid would not do a wind on (put on credit until it had expired). I said that I did not expect them to come out later tonight when it has expired. And the earliest would be tomorrow. As for the new card, that would not arrive for at least 2 days! I told the operator he was winding me up and extracting the Michael. He tried to assure me that it was not the case and said I was not listening to him. I said I was listening but he was taking no notice of my situation. I told him I was going to sue NPower's arse off. And that I wanted the meter taking out. He said that it would take 28 days! I said it would take less than that as I would knock them out and throw them out the front door. He said, that would be criminal damage. I said, it's criminal that NPower has taken money from me and failed to supply me with the service! I will change supplier, but I suspect they are all as bad as each other when it comes down to emergencies and prices.