I feel I have had very poor treatment from this company, who have twice put the phone down on me when I complained about their methods, which has never happened to me before.
Companies which deal on the phone usually have staff who are pleasant and trained to handle a complaint without resorting to this. Twice the initial people I spoke to refused to pass me on to a manager, and one of them actually said 'It's not our business to be helpful'!
My objection was to an orange 'Telemessage' letter that looked just like junk mail (which fortunately I boringly open), telling me I owed £31.37 to npower, but without any date showing me when the debt was incurred or any npower reference number on it.
npower knew nothing about it, so I informed Westcot of this and in my naivety left it to the two of them to sort it out.
When the next letter threatening bailiffs arrived, shortly followed by one from some solicitors, I contacted them both again, and finally it transpired that this amount was in fact owed from Jan 2002, 18 months ago - but during this period no one from either company had even asked me for it!
This is an astonishing and expensive way to do business...
Since turning 18 in 1974 I have paid all my bills on time, and in this particular case had the same name at the same address with the same telephone number, and had been paying all npower bills for the 18 months since this charge was incurred...
But it took me four or five hours and a lot of stress to sort it out. Both npower and Westcot were at fault, but this is little consolation if one's immaculate credit record of 30 years goes up in smoke!
Best of luck to anyone else dealing with either company!
Fiona