prepayment meters and emergency credit.

WhistleBlower

Sorry, been off sick.

Right, spoke with a friend of mine who is a PrePayments manager, he advised me we do *not* charge double on emergency credit.

However, while in emergency credit the meter can't take back for any outstanding balance it might be collecting or for the standing charge. Ask to have the balance re-investigated if necessary, you may have misdirected payments.

SwanJon

Just agreeing with WhistleBlower - This rumour comes up time and time again, and I've even seen some CSAs end up believing it as they hear it so often (the same with it not charging VAT in emergency).
If this was the case it would have to be included in your contract.
Every meter I've worked with doesn't seem to be able to be programmed to do it either.

Scouse28

We moved into our property 6 months ago, the meters are both on npower, the gas meter was on £1.08 ec this morning so we put £5.00 on the meter thinking it would put the meter back into credit until we could put more on tomorrow, after only being in emergency for only 1 day, but when applying this credit it said - £3.50 for emergency credit, £1.50 for gas, and then £2.58 emergency credit in use, so I phone and ask why and all I get as a reply is something about a 70% 30% split, so after 40 mins of local rate call, and getting nowhere, I still don't know where that £3.50 went or what it was for.
The best npower could do was book an engineer to check the meter, but as I am leaving them on the 11th to join Southern Electric via Ebico, it would be pointless as they would no longer be my provider.

Confused npower customer

dumbbrunette77

Hi Scouse28,

If your meter is owing anything (ie. emergency credit in use or a debt) then it is programmed to give you 70% of the credit you put on towards the balance owed and 30% is held back for credit for when you have repaid what's owed.

If you get £6 emergency credit and you had £1.08 of it left, the meter would need you to top up with £4.92+30% to get out of the emergency. In total you'd need to put on around £7 to repay the emergency fully.

The 'extra' 30% is held as standard credit for when the emergency (or debt) is fully repaid so you will not lose any money.

I recommend checking the 'owed' screen on the meter before topping up by pressing the red button 2 or 3 times. If this screen shows any balance, you need to top up by this amount +30%.

Hope that helps.

Scouse28

dumbbrunette77 wrote: »

Hi Scouse28,

If your meter is owing anything (ie. emergency credit in use or a debt) then it is programmed to give you 70% of the credit you put on towards the balance owed and 30% is held back for credit for when you have repaid what's owed.

If you get £6 emergency credit and you had £1.08 of it left, the meter would need you to top up with £4.92+30% to get out of the emergency. In total you'd need to put on around £7 to repay the emergency fully.

The 'extra' 30% is held as standard credit for when the emergency (or debt) is fully repaid so you will not lose any money.

I recommend checking the 'owed' screen on the meter before topping up by pressing the red button 2 or 3 times. If this screen shows any balance, you need to top up by this amount +30%.

Hope that helps.

There was only £5 emergency and we do not owe a debt to npower the debt that was showing as of last night when the credit had almost run out was 46p if thats what you are refering to in respect of the (debt) on the said screen.

Thanks for your rapid response

barrington86

WhistleBlower wrote: »

The most likely answer to this is not that you've been charged twice but that you're being asked to catch up on your standing charge.

When you are in emergency credit (EC) the meter can't claim the standing charge and it can build up if you use EC a lot.

This would be true if it was a GAS meter. OP said it was electric so this can't be the case. As the elec meter recovers full cost of emergency used plus standing charges before allowing further use.
What would be likely is that OP may have at some point an OLD TOKEN meter and may have been undercharged as a result of her meter not being changed. Thus the difference between her payments and actual consumption.



EDIT: I have just read the post again and it was not mentioned if it was gas or elec meter. The above statement is still true for elec meter.
Gas works on a 70/30 split. So 70% of a payment would go to what was owed to the meter and 30% given for gas. I believe that power charge approx £3.36 per week in standing charges (slightly more if your on a IGT). So if your EC is £5 and you use it all over 7 days in theory you would owe £8.36, If you top up by £10, the full £10 would NOT be taken, ONLY £7 would be taken leaving £1.36 to be paid. Leaving £3.00 for gas.
Sadly this happens a lot and I speak to maybe 20 People per day with the same type of query. All I can recommend is that you should try to keep your Emergency credit for EMERGENCY situations. The are certainly no extra charges for using the emergency credit however.

dumbbrunette77

Sorry, I was indeed talking about gas prepayment.

The 'owed' screen on the meter will show any balance owing be it debt or emergency credit owed.

The same calculation applies no matter what your emergency credit limit is: balance owed + 30% needed.

Barrington86 is absolutely right, use emergency for EMERGENCIES only. It will appear that your credit will go further!

Scouse28

It was only used as an emergency for one day, but now after it being explained properly by my new supplier southern electric/ebico when i applied £20 to the gas it paid £1.50 to emergency credit leaving me £18.50 for gas, this was from 0.00 emergency credit used, it just seems a pointless way of charging something for nothing and bad explanation from npower! Easiest way of doing things surely would be to make prepay gas meters the same as electric key meters, where it tells you what you have to replace to put back into credit for example £2.67 in emc put £10 on £7.67 for electric simple!

Scouse28

dumbbrunette77 wrote: »

Hi Scouse28,

If your meter is owing anything (ie. emergency credit in use or a debt) then it is programmed to give you 70% of the credit you put on towards the balance owed and 30% is held back for credit for when you have repaid what's owed.

If you get £6 emergency credit and you had £1.08 of it left, the meter would need you to top up with £4.92+30% to get out of the emergency. In total you'd need to put on around £7 to repay the emergency fully.

The 'extra' 30% is held as standard credit for when the emergency (or debt) is fully repaid so you will not lose any money.

I recommend checking the 'owed' screen on the meter before topping up by pressing the red button 2 or 3 times. If this screen shows any balance, you need to top up by this amount +30%.

Hope that helps.

Yes thanks, It is helpful in what you say but as it was yesterday with my new suppliers card, it would need £3.92 to bring it to £5 and even if there was a standing charge to pay which ebico dont do, it should of put the meter back into credit as I don't have a debt on the meter but as i say in my previous post it has calculated it in a way that works the same as adding the 1.50 back and giving me £18.50 of my £20

SwanJon

Scouse28 wrote: »

it should of put the meter back into credit

As above, the meter will only recover 70% of anything you put in for gas charges (debt or emergency credit). 70% of £5 in £3.50, so this was the most it could take, adding the other £1.50 onto your credit (£1.08+£1.50=£2.58) - so you were in credit, but you were also still using the borrowed money.
So you had borrowed £3.92, and paid £3.50 of it back. You have since gone on to use the other £1.08, and when you next topped up, you paid back this and the missing 42p = £1.50.

The electricity meters work like an overdraft - you only borrow what you need.
The gas meter works like a loan - you borrow the full amount then pay it all back.

As I said above, if your suppliers charges your for using emergency credit it will need to be in the contract, and I'm fairly sure that no supplier actually does this. (Although plenty of people - customers & employees - seem to think it does.)