So I was checking my leccy bill on the npower site and I noticed while I was there that it was in my wife's name and that they had spelt it wrongly.

Seeing as there was a "Change You Contact Details" link there and being a conceitedconscientious sort I clicked it, used the form to put it into my name. Submit.

Your request has been emailed to customer service and you will receive a response shortly

Eh? What request? I just changed the name. Oh well. 🙄

So 2 days later I get an email from them:

Thanks for your recent e-mail. Please help us by more specific. Have you now moved into the property and wish to have an account created for yourself, or is there another reason for the change of name on the account.
 
Please reply advising so we can look into your enquiry for you.

More specific? I filled in your blinking form. If you wanted me to be more specific why didn't you ask for that information on the blinkin form?? 🙄

So I wrote back:

The account is currently in my wife's name, which is spelt incorrectly.
 
I handle all the bills in the house, so I thought that rather than just
correcting the spelling, I'd use the online form to switch it over to my
name.
 
If I can't do that for some reason then it's really not a problem, but
if that's the case then could you correct the spelling to "MrsGrahamS" please?

Fair enough?

Then today, three days after I originally filled in the form…

Thank you for your enquiry.
 
Having checked the details kindly provided by you, I am unable to access your gas or electricity account as not enough information has been provided.
 
Due to the Data Protection Act it is essential that we receive additional information from you to enable us to access your account. To move things forward for you, can you please provide your full name, address including post code and a contact telephone number if one is available. You can provide this information by using our secure web forms which can be found at www.npower.com/customerservice or by calling me on 0800 551555.
 
Please do not respond by replying to this e-mail as internet e-mail is not a secure form of communication.


At which point I had a bit of a Victor Meldrew moment…

WTF? It's a simple name change. How hard can it be?

Sounds like npower.

Have you had them bump your monthly payments up by more than £100 yet the when you complain the reduce them back down below what you were originally paying? They're quite good at that.

No, but they have put me in credit by £100 taking hugely overestimating my usage, despite me giving them several intermediate meter readings. 🙄

i combined 2 houses and it took me 5 years and an 1" thick pile of correspondence including recorded delivery letters to get correctly addressed mail and a cessation of men standing in the front garden every 3 months with a clip board and shaking their heads wisely

good luck – could be worse The Halifax still get can't the address right after 8 years and we have a mortgage with them

It's just the wonderful Kafkaesque bureaucracy of first giving me a form on a password-secured web account to change my name, then emailing me and asking me for more specific details which weren't asked for on the form, then emailing me again saying I wasn't being specific enough, telling me off for using insecure email and directing me to use the online form.

🙄

Think I'll go watch Brazil.

"Let me talk to you about ducts."