Dad-of-two Sean Doyle pulled the plug on his power company – after his supply was switched without his knowledge.

Sales engineer Sean, 47, of Brockholes, had been a long-time customer of utility firm npower until he got a letter out of the blue saying sorry he was leaving.

Sean tried to call the company to tell them he didn’t want to switch – but he couldn’t get through security and found he was locked out of his own account.

There were two security questions, his account number and date of birth. He gave his date of birth but it didn’t match the company’s records and they refused to talk to him.

In frustration, Sean decided to shop around and switched his gas and electric online to SSE, saving an estimated £390 over 12 months.

Keen runner Sean got caught up in an automated phone system and had no more luck when he finally spoke to a “real person.”

He added: “In the old days you could ring someone up and sort it out over the phone but you can’t do that anymore.

“I rang the 0800 customer number but I had to go through security and the system asked my date of birth. I know when I was born but the system wouldn’t recognise it.

“I couldn’t get through to a human being and eventually found a number for the energy saving team and did speak to a real person. But again I failed security on my date of birth.

“After three or four half-hour calls I decided enough was enough. If they didn’t want me as a customer, I didn’t want them.

“I went on a price comparison website, saved myself £390 and cut my direct debit by £25 a month.”

Former marathon runner Sean, dubbed a “miracle man” after surviving a double heart attack at a Huddersfield Parkrun in May 2013, said he had never thought about switching before.

“I can’t believe a customer can be treated this way,” he said. “It’s obviously so easy to be turfed out of your own account.”

After he’d switched to a one-year fixed deal with SSE, Sean mistakenly received a bill for a new neighbour who had just changed his supplier and he believes that could explain the mix-up.

npower logo

An npower spokesman said the gas supply at Mr Doyle’s home had been switched to First Utility and questions about that should be directed to them.

In a statement the spokesman added: “Keeping our customers’ personal information secure is extremely important to us and the advisors who spoke to Mr Doyle were following the correct procedures as they were acting on information previously given to us.

“We’re sorry Mr Doyle is unhappy but like all energy suppliers, we carry out checks to make sure we are speaking to the right people.”

A spokesman for First Utility said: “We are sorry to hear about the interruption to Mr Doyle’s gas supply.

“This is a result of an application made to First Utility by a different customer who listed an incorrect property number.

“This is known in the industry as an Erroneous Transfer but once we were made aware of the error we initiated a process to return his supply to npower.

“We’d like to assure Mr Doyle that there are no charges from our side and we continue to co-operate with npower to resolve the matter as quickly as possible.”