To think I'm putting too much money on the meters??

[Bubblegum78]

Hi,

I have recently had gas and electric prepayment meters installed in my home, this is due to EON underestimating our utility bills for a year. (but that's another story

Anyway, I am having to put £10 on each meter every 18-24 hours so I am spending at least £60 a week on each meter.

The engineer who installed the meters seemed to think we would need to be putting £15 a week on each meter.

So the question is, is this normal?

Thanks B.xx

[mercibucket]

Yes, they always seem to try it on passing the last tenants debt onto the new tenant, disguised as a bill for the time since they moved in. I have seen this dozens and dozens of times with students. That's why you need to dig out the paperwork, see what the original reading is and compare to your bill. Could equally be a faulty meter, or one hooked up to more than one property.

[StrawberriesTasteLikeLipsDo]

gobble we are with british gas for both, not sure how they compare to others, and we do try and be careful, but 10-12 on each seems quite reasonable, this is an average as we top up £40 gas / £30 electric at a time and this lasts 3-4 weeks,we were on billed but i didn't like the nasty surprises! In summer we use much less.

[MoomieAndFreddie]

no it is NOT normal

this happened to me when i moved into my house 3 years ago, after weeks and weeks of talking to absolute incompetent arsewipes at southern electric, who swore blind i was being charged the right amount. yeah cos £1 for every hour of having your heating on is normal isn't it you robbing cunts .

eventually, after threatening them with energywatch, they let me speak to someone who knew what they were on about, and it turned out the previous tenant had a big debt to them, and for some reason it had been transferred to ME so basically, something like, 80p in the pound of everything i put in was going towards a debt that wasnt even mine

so no. its not normal. hound them with phone calls and get them to sort it. and threaten energywatch. i used to work for british gas so i know this will kick their arse into helping you

good luck x

[Rowgtfc72]

Interesting to read this thread. Were not on a meter but Eon have decided to gradually increase our DD from £65 a month to £101 a month as our usage has gone up by 85 %.If anything we use much less. Will check the serial numbers on the meters though as something feels iffy. Good luck op.

[lovelyladuree]

They still have meters?

[gobbledegook1]

Can I ask who your with Strawberries?

[violetbunny]

Many years ago I used to work in a call centre for a power & gas company, so hope that I can help you.

mercibucket has offered you some good advice - please be sure to check whether the meter readings shown on your bills at the time you moved in matched what the meter was showing. If not, then you have good grounds to challenge EON on this as they can't bill you for usage that belonged to the previous owner/tenant!

Also check your most recent bills from EON and make sure that the meter reading is close to what you're currently seeing on the meter - meter readers are only human, occasionally they can enter a wrong digit!

Do make sure you were being billed for the correct meter - I used to take a surprising number of calls from people who turned out to have been billed for the wrong meter (sometimes for years). Bills will nearly always show the meter serial number, check this matches what is on your meter. Meter miixups can happen easily where meters for different properties are next to one another, so if your meter is near others it's important to check they have the right one. You can easily check it's your meter by switching off all your appliances etc and watching the meter to see if it stops.

Hope this helps.

[TheFutureMrsB]

You can get them to lower the debt rate they take, I think the lowest rate they will do is £3 per week.
I am doing that now after a mess up with my gas when I first moved in. It took me a few phone calls and had to top up the meter with three separate payments from the same paypoint place 24 hours apart but then a signal apparently gets sent to the paypoint meter thingy and your debt will be taken at the lower rate.

I put £20 on my electric every week but about £30 on my gas. £20 goes on, they take £3 debt and then later in the week I'll pop another £10 on and no debt gets taken from that.

[StrawberriesTasteLikeLipsDo]

We have a large 1920s house that is cold (arctic!!) in winter. We have the gas central heating on for 2 hours in the morning, and just over 4 in the evening, the gas is also used for hot water and cooking. We have small electric heaters that get used periodically to heat particular rooms. In this cold we have still only gone through £10-12 max a week! Id say something is up with yours!

[spoonsspoonsspoons]

You really need to check that the meter isn't still turning when everything is off. Then switch one thing on where you know the kwH for a set time and work out if the meter is working correctly

[gobbledegook1]

I have just moved into a new house and I'm currently with Eon and on metres and its costing me around £30 a week for gas in a 3 bed mews (3 hours of heating per day and cooking on gas hob) and around £10 a week in electric and thats without the use of the electric cooker or washing machine as they have been out of order so estimate it will go up to about £15 a week once these are working. Thats a total of £45 a week. It was costing me £40 a week on average with Eon in my last house which was a 2 bed bungalow but had the heating on more and an electric cooker. I envy those of you who are somehow managing to spend just £15 on gas in a week. My sister is in a 3 bed semi detached bungalow on metres and she is paying roughly what I am and has her heating on just 2 hrs a day. So with a debt added maybe not that unreasonable, I check what rate your debt is set at and see if it can be lowered.

[SolidGoldFrankensteinandmurgh]

It sounds to me like they are ripping you off. I am paying a £500 debt via a keymeter and putting about £18 a week on it, which is for all the electricity, lighting, laptop, telly etc. £1 a day for the debt and about £1 a day for ongoing usage (though I am a bit pissed off with EDF who fitted the keymeter about two years ago, said that the debt would be reduced at the rate of £1 a day but my usage would be about 40p a day therefore £1o a week would be fine, then all of a sudden sent a very nasty letter threatening bailiffs and court orders and, when I rang them, said brightly that they had somehow 'forgotten' to put the debt onto the meter so now I am looking at another 18 months to pay it...)

[woopdiedoo]

Forgot to add that this has gone in for over two year and debt is now down to about £700. They have written to us in the past to say they have not been deducting enough for the debt then increased the amount they were taking from the top up. They recently write again to day that they predict, based on our current usage that we will be debt free by 2016 .

[woopdiedoo]

I nearly posted a thread like this myself. DP got into a similar amount of debt for similar reasons before I moved in with him.

We are with Scottish power and only have gas on the meter. We are topping up £20 every two days at the moment but only have heating on for two hours a day. They only take £5 each week for the debt and a few pence each time we top up.

House is similar size end terrace but old and poorly insulated. I am SAHM and I am freezing most of the day but cannot afford to top up any more than we are doing so.

I have considered that it might not be right but never thought to question it as you just expect that they are charging us correctly.

YANBU. Not really got anything useful to say but will be reading this thread with interest.

[Bubblegum78]

Hi TenPercenter,

Can you please read the WHOLE thread before you post.

This was NOT our fault.

Yes Merci, I have looked into it but I am going around in circles. They say they go by the meter readings and according to the meters we are spending £3000 a year in gas and electric on a 3 bed semi!

I'm going to contact them again tuesday and request ALL paperwork regarding this issue so at least I'm armed.

I can agree that we are classified as high usage, but £3000 a year? Surely not??

[mercibucket]

Ok, is this the first time you've actually looked into the bills etc?

In that case, get hold of all your bills from when you first moved in. Look at all the readings - are they E for estimated or A for actual (well I'm not sure if it says A to be honest)

First, check the initial reading matches what it was when you moved in (on rent agreement if renting, hopefully you took a note if you bought). Then also look inside the meter box and see if there are any meter reading written in. When they changed my meters they wrote in the numbers on the old meter onto the door.

Also consider if there could be a problem where you are paying for another house as well for instance so turn off everything and see if the meter still clocks up

[mercibucket]

Ok, is this the first time you've actually looked into the bills etc?

In that case, get hold of all your bills from when you first moved in. Look at all the readings - are they E for estimated or A for actual (well I'm not sure if it says A to be honest)

First, check the initial reading matches what it was when you moved in (on rent agreement if renting, hopefully you took a note if you bought). Then also look inside the meter box and see if there are any meter reading written in. When they changed my meters they wrote in the numbers on the old meter onto the door.

Also consider if there could be a problem where you are paying for another house as well for instance so turn off everything and see if the meter still clocks up

[mrskeithrichards]

Can you check your meters to see your debt repayments? They might be set too high.

I don't have gas, at this time of year it's about £35 a week we put on, £5 of that is debt repayment.

In summer it's about £20 a week.

[Bubblegum78]

I don't know?

How do I get this info? x

[TenPercenter]

So obviously you are paying off arrears, if these payments of arrears are too much you need to get in touch with your supplier. How on earth did you let your arrears get so high in the first place?

You really do need to give a meter reading at least once a quarter, I do this and we are always on top of our readings/payments.

To have a bill of £1500 must have taken a lot of head in the sand!!

In the days of internet etc, estimated readings should not exist.

You need to contact your supplier and get them to decrease the arrears taken at each top up.

[mercibucket]

So they changed the meters after you'd been living there a year?
Did they write the old meter readings inside the new meters?
How often have you read your meters?
Were all previous bills based on estimates? Do you have any from the beginning that are based on actual readings?
I'm thinking something has gone wrong with the meter readings somewhere along the line maybe

[Bubblegum78]

My MIL owns residential homes and does not pay this a year!

[Bubblegum78]

happy2bhomely... I'm sure you are correct!

I'm at my wits end, I've just written an email to the energy ombudsman:

Hello.
I have had gas and electricity prepayment meters installed in my home.
This was due to arrears with EON.
We had been living in our property a year when EON changed our meters, we were told it was because the meters were out of date and as a result our bills would be unecessarily high.
After a year and a half EON told us were were in arrears. £1500 electric and £750 in gas.
Up to this point we had been paying £75 a month for both bills by DD.
This means that EON claim we are spending in the region of £3000 a year.
Eon claim that they tried to gain entry to the property during this time but I had been off sick for 8 months so I know this to be untrue.
In a telephone conversation EON admitted liability but still insisted we pay the arrears.
We paid an initial payment of £500 and agreed to pay the arrears off monthly but the instalments they wanted was too high and we could not keep up.
They have now installed the meters, initially the engineer told us we would be paying £15 per week for each meter but we are paying £10 every 18-24 hours.
We now have 6 children in the property as of October (3 are step children due to mother's illness).
We are struggling to cope and need assistance.

[happy2bhomely]

I'm with eon and we put £30 on Gas and £20 on electric every 10 days. This keeps a 3 bed semi at a constant 20 degrees day and night and the tumble drier is on every day. We are not paying off any debt.

£60 a week per meter is insane!

[Bubblegum78]

We read the meters at the moment when we use every single appliance.

We have worked out that in 12 hours we have spent £3.50.