Raw Deal: Mum of two beats the energy bill blues as winter chill begins to bite

EMMA Casey has finally managed to get out of her contract with Npower after a “stressful” dispute with the energy firm.

The mum of two moved into a three-bedroom, semi-detached property in October 2017 and arranged to pay her bills by direct debit.

“All was well until April, when I received a one-off bill of £1,444 plus a letter informing me that my direct debits would rise to £260 per month,” said Emma, from Whitley Bay, North Tyneside. “These costs were prohibitively expensive and they also made little sense to me.”

Emma said she made numerous calls to Npower to complain but was put on hold for up to 90 minutes at a time.

“I was instructed by different people at Npower to do a variety of different things – for example, have the meter changed, take a five-day reading of my meters and simply ignore the ‘erroneous’ bills while they arrived,” she said.

“All of this was to no avail. The demands for payment continued and in the end I gave up, paid everything and requested to move to British Gas.”

Frustratingly, Emma then found she had great difficulty trying to switch to another provider.

At the end of her tether, she wrote to Raw Deal for help and we asked Npower to look into the issue.

As a result, Emma’s transfer to British Gas has finally gone through and she is glad to see the back of the whole situation.

She has also received £100 from Npower as a gesture of goodwill.

“This problem was mysteriously sorted very quickly as soon as Raw Deal got involved,” said Emma.

A spokesperson for Npower said: “Initially there was a delay in switching the electricity supply to British Gas – this was due to meter exchange details not being updated on the national database. These details have now been amended.”