ROGUE ENERGY SALESPEOPLE

The Industry Watchdog is concerned about sales techniques

Inside Out presenter Chris Packham investigates slippery salespeople, who make a killing out of unsuspecting people.

The manager of a Portsmouth marketing company has been suspended following an undercover BBC South investigation.

Mitchell Ubah, from the Cobra agency's Arundel Street office, led a team of salesmen who tried to trick customers into changing their gas and electricity suppliers.

The BBC's Inside Out programme secretly filmed one salesman lying to residents in Waterlooville as he tried to persuade them to switch to NPower.

A spokesman for NPower said that the salesman responsible had been dismissed and that Mr Ubah had been suspended.

"What happened was just plain wrong and we are not taking it lightly at all," said the spokesman.

"There has been a problem in our Portsmouth office and I am very sorry to say the proper procedure hasn't been followed. We have retrained the entire office to make sure these things wont happen again."

NPower has also agreed to pay compensation to anybody who was tricked into switching their energy supplier.

Presenter Chris Packham says: "The sales pitch is dishonest from the start.

"They ask people if they have received their letter about their price reductions. But the letter doesn't exist and there aren't any guaranteed price reductions."

Last year, there were 12,000 complaints about energy salesmen and NPower was one of the worst offenders. The company recently signed up to a new code of conduct and promised to clean up its act.

But Ann Robinson, chair of the industry watchdog, was appalled by what she saw on the BBC's footage.

"This is evidence that the voluntary code of conduct isn't working and that we may have to think again about regulation," she said.

"In the meantime, I want Npower to check every sale that has been made over the last six months. They should transfer people back to their orginal supplier if necessary and pay everybody £250 compensation."