npower, unlike BT, has had the decency to apologise to me, and offer to pay me for my mobile phone bills, as long as I submit them. Which I cannot go because I use pay as you go. Since I cannot supply the bills they have decreed that the ‘correct’ compensation for me is £10.

Which I think, and I have told them, is grossly inadequate. Since my saga with npower has been going on far longer than my saga with BT, and is easily veriable by them as well as by me.

But npower tells me that they have so many accounts that they cannot trace my payments to them, unless I give them all the bank references!

So npower has threatened three times to cut off my gas supply and sent in the debt collectors hoping to break down my door. Despite the fact that they were collecting my money by direct debit!!!

So it is obvious that I cannot rely on customer services. I have to send my complaints to the boss.

So who is the boss of npower?

npower is a company which emerged from the Thatcher zeal for privatising everything. The main root company was the privatised Midlands Electricity Board, which, as it happens supplied my electricity in Wolverhampton when I was studying for my A-levels, and never once threatened to cut off our supply, because my parents paid their bills. As do I.

But in 2001 npower was acquired by RWE, which is a German coal mining company, which has ‘diversified’ into all sorts of power, including nuclear, gas, electricity, oil, etc. npower is a tiny part of this vast empire. So if it takes npower over four months to find the money I have been paying them to what they say is their ‘many accounts’ how can I convince RWE, that their subsidiary has been harrassing me for money which I had already paid.

Difficult. But since the RWE web site tells me how socially responsible they are I shall go to the top. The President and chief executive of RWE Group. He is Jurgen Grossman and his web address is: http://www.rwe.com/generator.aspx/konzern/executive-board/juergen-grossmann/language=en/id=498692/juergen-grossmann-page.html

This is what he looks like. And he has clearly done all the ‘right things’ career wise. But does he know what npower is doing for him in Britain?

Dr.-Ing. Dr. E.h. Jürgen Großmann

President and CEO

Biography

Probably not. So please tell him.

From my experience his underlings at npower show that RWE stands for Really the Worst European  gas company in Britain.

RWE clearly has its finger in a vast number of pies in many countries.

But in supplying gas to London NW3 they are the pits.