To think I shouldn't have to put my toddlers to bed in two jumpers and have to boil the kettle to fill a warm bath?

[AmIWhatAndWhy]

I'm getting bloody fed up. Our prepayment meter is now costing us £50 a week for gas, and we rarely use it. I'm certain there's a problem with the meter but nobody comes out to see it. You can bet if they expected we were being undercharged they'd be out in a flash.

So yet again our meter has run out after topping up by £20 yesterday so I had to do a kettle bath for the DC and I'll just have to be unwashed.

I know gas prices are high but this is just shite.

I have only skimmed the thread but would honestly wonder if you are paying for the shop's elec as well. I can't think why else it would be on their premises?

I think its absolutely shocking that a family with children can't get access to top up their gas if they need to. Some people are just unbeleivably horrible.

Also I came on to post, just to sympathise - we've just moved into an old house that we didn't manage to finish off before we had to move - we moved in 3 weeks ago when it was freezing and have no heating or hot water yet... Our only water supply so far is a cold tap sticking out of the kitchen wall although dp has connected the cold tap in the bathroom sink as well now.
I could hardly get in bed last night for all the hot water bottles.
I boiled up a kettle of water this morning for a wash in a freezing bathroom. So I just wanted to sympathise cos its SHITE but I do know that in about 10 days we will be OK.

Have you tried the ombudsman etc to demand why you should have your meter on someone else's premises and have it moved where the gas supply actually enters YOUR premises?

Sorry you are having such an uncomfortable time, I am hating it and its only temporary.

Sweetkitty, we have that problem too!! We changed to EDF from BG and when the meter ran out, we couldn't top up b/c the shop as it was broken, so we rang edf only to be told that we had never left BG!!! We are pre-payment though.

Only thing is, we get nectar points from edf and have been getting them for about 6 months Even though we are not with them

Please don't go onto BG, even for a short time!!! They are dire!!

We reckoned that even being charged £40 to change onto proper metered gas, we would save money in the long run from overpaying with pre-payment charges.

The thing that gets me is that BG, scottishpower, e-on etc are always coming round or phoning up saying that we are on a more expensibe tariff than our neighbours (lie they don't know that), they have done away with standard charges and that they are the cheapest and could save us £X, thing is they can't all be the cheapest so some of them are lying.

I think it's disgusting that prepay customers pay more than DD or quarterly customers.

We got stung by EDF when we switched over as they set our DDs at too little, then wanted to put our electricity up from £25 a month to £120!

I think they are all as bad as each other.

In that you could go through £50 a week in gas. Would be really useful to take a few meter readings each day to see how much gas you are using. Also what sort of boiler do you have - we recently changed to a new combi and the gas useage has reduced so even with higher prices we now pay about the same / less than before. If you rent do you know when the landlord last had the bolier serviced - I think they have to advise the efficiency in a report too. We found out our old boiler was effectively just 'leaking out gas' in a sort of safe way - waste of money though! Have quite a large house but monthly amount is ceratinly less than you are paying. Would recommend that anyone that changes suppliers to do regular meter checks vs the estimated bill so you don't get 'stung' with having to repay back. Also feel that the pre pay is such a rip off to those in society that need a bit of help - at least have the same opportunity to pay the same price per unit.

I reckon the shop's up to something too.

Admittedly it was a few years ago but we had prepayment meter and we never paid that much per week.