To be annoyed that he's put in a prepayment smart meter

[wtfprepayment]

Without my agreement?

Honestly, I'm so pissed off. Came home to a surprise smart meter and now I've noticed the leaflet says "prepayment smart meter".

DH has wanted one for ages, he knows I don't but booked it in anyway. I wasn't amused but just figured I'd shove it in a drawer if he started obsessing over it and banging on about energy costs.

But now I've seen the leaflet and it says it's a prepayment smart meter 😳 Utility Warehouse if that's relevant.

Wtf is this? Does this mean he's got us on a system meant for those on a tight budget? If it runs out because we forget to top up and go on holiday or whatever, is the freezer going to defrost? Are we now limited to worse deals and tariffs?

I'm fuming, but it's the middle of the night and everyone else is asleep so if someone who has one of these sodding things can reassure me I'd be extremely grateful.

(FWIW we earn similar, share the bills and are not struggling to pay them).

Just to add there are 50,000 reps in the UK for utility warehouse

The average income is 488 a month (those 1% at the tippy top will be on 10's of thousands a month so taking those out would bring this down to pocket money for the majority

They get paid 250 to sign up a new customer
They get paid up to 6% of your monthly bill
Most peoples bills are what £200 a month so they get say £250 per initial sign up and £12 a month. Not exactly a living wage unless you can get 10 new customers a month every month and once you have quickly exhausted your family (in month 1) and annoyed your friends on social media with constant posting where are the new customers coming from?

To make any kind of wage you have to recruit so you get paid to sign up reps and then also get paid on their customers bills as well as your own customers bills. Recruit 3 reps a month who each recruit 3 reps who each recruit 3 reps etc and that is the only way to make anywhere near a wage.

Mlm structures are great for the owners - 50,000 staff pushing their products hard that they don't have to pay an actual wage or in work benefits or pension to. Result

Not necessarily, you could pay variable monthly bills, it's the simple fact that you pay after you've used the power not before

The type of meter ie smart or old school makes zero difference in honesty. It just means that you don't get estimated readings. Unless you change how you use electricity then the bills won't change.
There's a short period of time where you look at usage and then you'll put it in a cupboard and forget about it. That apparently is typically what happens with all of them!

Df used to flap about cost of electrics back in the 80s.
"Do you realise that the cost of leaving that extra light on was nearly 15 shillings!"

He didn't need a smart meter.

@EasterIssland yes but your post replied to bearcub who asked how a credit meter worked

The time to panic is when he creates an “energy usage spreadsheet” 😡

I would switch to another utility company immediately (I think this renders the smart meter a dumb meter) but even if not, you would at least be choosing a company you trust.

And more to the point I'd be dealing with my marriage - he knew you were against this snd did it anyway without your knowledge or consent. That's not how relationships work successfully. Him making unilateral decisions that you have to live with the consequences of, is a problem.

"Utility warehouse is a pyramid scheme. People are incentivised to sign up their friends and family."

I agree it's an MLM, a pyramid scheme, wouldn't touch them with a barge pole (if DH wasn't a fucking walking talking nightmare of course). However, he's never going to sign anyone up, or try to and I'm incentivised by everyone from AMEX to Bloom & Wild to nectar to sign up friends and family. To be fair to UW they appear to have offered us a better service than shitty EON (the whole reason I gave him total control of utilities 😩.)

I've decided my plan of action is to burn through as much energy as humanly possible while he's not looking for, say, a fortnight. Then when winter really kicks in I will look like Santa's frugal elf 😇

"And more to the point I'd be dealing with my marriage - he knew you were against this snd did it anyway without your knowledge or consent. That's not how relationships work successfully. Him making unilateral decisions that you have to live with the consequences of, is a problem."

Mate. Trust me, he's under no illusion that this shit is not a problem. We're not a new couple, nor are we generally "unsuccessful" as a couple. Until he gets carried away with some stupid obsession of course 😖

Yes sorry I misread the question. I’m sorry

As well as existing customers being incentivised to sign up new customers, the extra services are more expensive than available separately so negate any benefit of the utilities being slightly cheaper.

Oh that's great, I was being paid to do the washing and ironing the other day.

We have a prepayment meter thanks to the previous owner. We also have a smart meter thingy.

At first I was really annoyed about the setup but I just top up with £75 every month and can see how much we use daily. And how much we have left.

It hasn't been the really extortionate money pit I assumed it was. (Although my house is just a 2 bed with an outside office. Our DC have xboxes etc! We usually end the day under £2!)

Utility Warehouse are absolutely awful though!!

As s poster said upthread, her underfloor heating is redundant now because of it.

I don’t understand that statement. Energy costs are the same whether you have a smart meter or not. And you don’t have to use the display monitor that tells you how much you are using.

I've been witvUW for years, had no idea about the MLM thing. No one has ever asked me to work for them. The woman I deal with couldn't be more helpful, dealt with SSE who were ripping me off. My bills are consistently considerably less than people i know in similar situations as me.
I'm worried now!

Everyone is focusing on the "smart meter" which is fine because it tells you what you're using. It's the "PRE PAYMENT" which is the bugbear, I assume you mean one of those you have to keep topping up that costs more than normal?!

I remember one of their reps coming to my house, as my then partner had stupidly agreed to an appointment. She was all nice at the beginning but when I said I wasn't interested, after her presentation, she soon got uppity. I wouldn't want that job.

I'm sure the government wanted to put an end to the "Prepayment Premium" - I'm not 100% sure though.

Like I say, we're prepayment and use under £2.50 a day and that's with Scottish Power! With DC and homeworking etc

It focusses the mind somewhat when you see the figures jump up when you put an appliance on.

Of course I knew an electric shower was expensive to run - when we moved from a house with a combi which the shower ran off to a house with an electric shower our electric bill jumped noticeably. The smart meter just shows you how much.

It was also helpful that we could work out in August last year that the ancient gas boiler was costing us £10/mth at that point just for the pilot light. We didn't dare turn it off over the summer as it probably wouldn't have turned back on again. We splashed and got a combi fitted. We save that £10, the extra cost of the luxury of having hot water coming out of all the hot water taps (I'd rarely put the immersion on) is covered by the money saved on not running an electric shower), and we can have the heating on a bit longer at no extra cost because the boiler is more efficient (and with the smart meter I could prove it and work out how much we could afford to have the heating on - there may have a spreadsheet involved at one point...)

Ok. Smart meters are fine, even good in fact. They can hep you udnerstand whem and how you use energy - our display glows orange when we are using a lot of energy so you pin point energy hungry stuff.

The daily and weekly costs displays also help avoid bill shock as you roughly know what you have been spending (I don't need a spreadsheet EDF do it all for me online)

They won't affect any equipment in the house, they cannot make your heating "redundant" anymore than a dumb meter can.

If you don't like UW just switch supplier, the meters should be interoperable these days.

Lot of fuss about nothing.

Is your per unit cost, as well as any standing charge, for the credit meter - whatever that is?! - the same as it would be for direct debit?

It's your normal electric "get the bill/pay your direct debit and cry at your bank statement" system - just with a fancy readout thingee now that can make you sob as the numbers go up every time you boil the fucking kettle and lead to divorce over arguments about the heating thermostat.

I've hidden the display of ours - it was stressing me out too much and DH is forever fiddling with our energy tariffs (he works in the industry and is sad and financially geeky anyway) so I just ignore it, complain when I'm cold and turn the heating up.

@Ginmonkeyagain but I'm not getting "energy bill shock" and yes, the smart meter can make things "redundant" as previous posters have explained due to the way it changes your mindset. I don't want my mindset changed but I know for a fact that, at least at first, DH will be on pins every time the smart meter seems it excessive by glowing fucking orange at him.

For all the posters that missed my update ITS NOT A PREPAYMENT METER AFTER ALL. Thank fuck.

*Deems it excessive

Whilst UW are a MLM, as someone who worked in the industry for years (with BG not UW) they are often the cheapest. Not sure on their ethics but unless people are actually being swindled I don't see much wrong with their set up