Prepayment electricity meters (esp British/Scottish Gas) - anyone know...

[spookthief]

...why we should have a 35p a day charge on it?

To cut a long story shortish, we went onto a prepayment metre because we had to pay off a huge, unexpected debt.

We paid the debt off over two years and were royally mucked about by Scottish Gas who never seemed to know how much we still had to pay off when contacted, repeatedly gave us the wrong information and finally, when pressed, discovered we had overpaid by £150.

We have decided to keep the metre in the short term so that we can budget more easily and get to grips with how much electricity we're using. Once that happens we'll certainly be switching from Scottish Gas.

The issue at the moment is that we're going through top-ups quicker than we expected and dh has discovered that the metre has this 35p/day charge on it which would certainly explain some of it.

Before we enter the nightmare of the Scottish Gas Customer Services Helpline again, does anyone know whether this is legitimate? I know prepayment customers do pay more but I thought this was via a higher rate per kw.

bumping once..

..and then will get me to the queue, where they'll tell me their lines are very busy, after 20 minutes someone will answer and then hang up on me, I'll queue again and finally will get a very bored CSR who won't know but will probably tell me I still owe £££ as that's what they've done every time in the last 6 months grrrrrrrrrr

standing charge??
All companies/meters take out standing charge each day(think ours is about 10p a day,but not too sure) or it could be that they're still charging you for what you owed them,35p a day seems quite a lot,tho those meters are unbelievably expensive,we go through £20 a week in winter-no gas

I didnt think it was as much as 35p...the rates are online somewhere...if you can find them.
I go through about 9 a week in electric well over 20 in winter if i put the heating on in gas.

When we were on british gas they abolished the standing charge on meters - still too much money tho so we swapped to powergen.
Lisa x

We're with london energy(or e energy?!),would love to move...costs a fortune with no gas,it's only a small 2 bed flat

Still haven't got through . Jamila, yes that's what it says online - they say they have no standing charge so it definitely looks dodgy .

If it is an extra 35p a day for some reason, we'll switch to Scottish Power or similar and just set up a standing order into my savings account. In fact, I'm thinking we may as well do that now actually. I'm so sick of them.

Can get quite a nice cash back deal on quidco for switching too...

I quite fancy getting one of those devices that shows you exactly how much electricity you're using at any one time but I think they're still about £50.

Ask for a booklet explaining how to scroll through the settings -ie there is a button to press that scrolls through your meter readings, charges relating to paying back any debt.

If you have already paid back the debt and you are on a smartmeter (different companies use different termanology I used to work for npower) ie you have a card that you top up on and not those paper tokens, then they can reset your meter from their offices. So they change it, you then go and top up, the machine puts the new instruction on the card and you put it into your meter and it adjusts the settings.

Some people used to use it as a savings account and have a refund cheque just before Christmas.

You should still get a bill every quarter telling you what you have used and what you have paid. The debt should have been reducing on every bill and then shown a credit. They sound useless and I would request them to ring you back ONLY after getting the full name of the person you have rung, their call center location and any extention number just in case they don't ring you baack!!!