One of the biggest energy suppliers npower has made changes so that they comply with the energy market reforms made by Ofgem, this is well before the December deadline that they have set. To comply with the new market reforms, npower have cut the tariffs they offer to their customers to just four, when they have seven previously.
As well as cutting the amount of energy tariffs that they offer, npower have also rolled out a newly designed energy bill. This is to make the billing easier to understand by npower’s customers, this comes soon after recent news that 80% Of Domestic and Business Customers Confused By Their Bills.
When designing the new energy bill npower’s main objective was to cut out the confusing and cluttered parts of the bill. When launched in October this year the new look energy bills from npower should be a lot easier to understand.
The new design of npowers energy bills have been made off the back of feedback from a large number of their customers. This research has allowed them to categorize their customers into two different types of people. They have noticed that you will get what are called skimmers who will just look for how much money they owe, and when this deadline to pay the bill is. The other type of person is what is called a checker, this type of person will read through all of the energy bill to make sure that there is no mistakes within it.
As a result of this they have designed their new energy bills to suit both types of people. At the top of the bill there will be a clear and defiant number showing how much they owe and when the bill is due. The further down the bill it goes into more details about their energy usage and what they owe the money for.
The new bill also shows a comparison (if possible) of their energy usage with their current usage and the usage from the previous year. This will give npower’s customers a great insight into if they have become more energy efficient over the last year, or if infact they are consuming more energy. This is will also give their customers a good insight into the changes in price for energy over the last 12 months.
With the roll out of the newly designed energy bills the energy supplier is also cutting back in the number of energy tariffs that they offer. From October 2013 npower will only offer four tariffs for its customers to choose from. These tariffs will include one, two and three year fixed rate and variable tariffs.
To make things a little more streamlined npower will also be offering its customers an incentive if they choose to pay by direct debit, this will be in the form of a discount of £40 for electricity and £50 for gas customers.
When the new npower tariffs are launched in October, their single rate electricity customers will see their stand charge go up from £36 to £40. But not to worry as they are planning on offsetting this by a reduction in unit rate.
Changes being made to comply with the energy market reforms
All of the changed npower are making have been done to comply with the market reforms that have been put in place by the energy market regulator. Ofgem are shaking up the domestic energy market in order to make things fairer and more transparent for the average domestic energy customer.
