Key Meter but still in debit

highroyds

Hey all,

I hope someone can help me with this.

We decided a few years ago to go with the Pay As You Go meter and kept paying tokens into the meter. Now this was excellent and kept getting a bill through from NPower that stated we were in credit. This Credit kept going up and up, but then a few months or so we then later found out that NPower had supposed to come out and change the prices on our meter which they hadn't been doing.

They came out and altered our meter and found out we were actually in debit, so the guy altered it so that the meter would actually give us the electric that we were paying but we would also be paying off the debit at the same time.

Now this has been going on for a year or so. We had throught that this debit would and should of been cleared by now, but they never came out to change the price of the electric thats supposed to happen.

A guy did come out in the last few weeks to change the PAYG token meter with a Key Meter. We're not sure if anything else was done and last I checked the meter was showing that we had £30 in credit of the electric. But this morning we have received a bill for around £119 debit for 3 months. This means our bill has gone up by around £60 from the last bill.

Now we can't understand how its gone up when we're on a pre paid token key meter.

spiro

If you look on you key meter one of the screens will show the debt and another the debt recovery rate. Problem with the old token meters was they needed a site visit every time the price changed which didnt always happen due to the numebr of meters which is why they are all being swapped out as quickly as they can do it. So if you have had a visit to reset your meter after every NPower price rise this is why your dsebt has gone up. OFGEM are also monitoring the behaviour of suppliers in relation to how they handle the 'debt' accured so you may want to get them to proivide a breakdown of how th deb was incurred and if it was their fault what they will do o reduce it. If they say nothging try mentioning the OFGEM letter. See http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Sustainability/SocAction/Publications/Documents1/Token%20PPMs%20%20April%20May%20June%2007%20Update.pdf

taplady

This is also happening to us but we are on a smart meter, it says we are £6 in credit but we had an online bill today and they wanted over £300 on top of what we have already paid:mad: we have just continued to put money on the smart card as required so surely if they are not charging enough it is their fault. we have no way at all of knowing how much we owe except for what is on the meter. I tried to ring them earlier but after going in a queue for 10 mins decided to leave it till morning:mad: There's no way we can pay it. We asked for a meter in the first place so we could avoid owing them any money!
Anyone know where we stand on this?

taplady

spiro - I couldn't get the link to work.

BexTech

This is the problem with pre-payment meters, sadly people don't realise not only are they paying more for their energy, they might not actually be paying into the meter enough to cover the true cost. Nowadays people are more likely to find at the end of the year they are in debt due to the number of price increases, whereas 10 years ago you were often in credit. I think most people don't realise many meters don't always take the credit off at the payable rate and simply undertake what they should be taking.

Pre-payment meters for most people cause them more problems than they solve, it leaves them with less money due to the higher costs and can lead them with a high debt when they find the payments they made haven't covered the actual cost.

We always advise, don't have pre-payment meters, have standard meters and every week write down on a calendar your meter readings and check your usage and work out much you are using with your price per unit (for gas you'll need to do some simple maths) - electric easier still, then simply put that money (and a little more) aside (possibly in an account) and then use that to pay the bill - better still once you have some idea of your energy use, switch to direct debit and set the rates to cover use - continuing to check your usage to make sure you payments will cover usage.