Got Billed for Prepayment Meter - seriously!

ians1

We switched from Scottish Power to E-ON on the advice of Uswitch for a saving in electricity. There was no debt at all on the pre-payment meter.

We were presented with a final bill for c£81 from SP but how can this be with a pre-payment meter, you can't use electric you have not paid for, surely?

Other problems with the switch was E-ON said the meter fitted was incompatible with the tariff and needs removing and a new one fitted (which they said was payable weekly by Paypoint) but they now say we have to pay by DD through bank, which is OK actually because its slightly lower tariff, its just a surprise they can change these things without telling you, so beware when you switch with Uswitch, you may unwittingly end up on a different tariff, albeit more favourable, but nonetheless different than the contract states.

Also the meter has an incorrect charge rate set at 12.65p/unit which will not be changed until 30th Oct we are told, so how will they know when that wrong rate was set?

Oh, and I had to complain to E-ON that the £30 they wanted to charge for changing the meter was not on, as I was never advised of the requirement, they dropped the charge!

ian :rolleyes:

spiro

The final bill for £81 may depend on what type of prepayment meter you have, is it key, smartcard or token? The latter cant be updated remotely so the tariff you have been paying may have been out of date and that is why you owe money.

ians1

It was a token meter, but how would I know it was out of date? We bought tokens and got electric, so the consumer can't change the rate manually so its the suppliers responsibility surely? How could we possibly have paid more, the rate is set in the meter. Putting more tokens in only adds credit for the same rate, it does not increase the rate of charge on the tariff.

I definitely will not pay the extra charges as I don't believe its legal to, in effect, change the price of something after they have sold it to you. The term is "PRE" payment after all.

I am sure after I have finished having a go at SP they will re-consider their position anyway.

The more immediate problem is that this switch has left us with no means of topping up the pre-payment meter before the 30th Oct and its only got £10 left on it!

Should be interesting when I call E-ON and tell them the electric has gone off...

ian

Premier_2

Lots of threads on here about this issue.

Watch BBCs watchdog this week for more examples.

The point is that a pre-pay meter is not a vending machine, but merely a way of collecting some payments on account to help prevent or minimise (but not eliminate) a huge bill building up.

Power companies have 65 working days after a price increase is implemented to inform you about it. (this is not the same timeframe in which they have to recalibrate meters to take effect of such increases - their responsibilty there is merely defined by the fact they should be recalibrated within a 'reasonable' time)

You will have to pay for all energy consumed at the rate agreed. Money paid feeding a meter is used to off-set the amount owed. The amount fed into a meter may be more, less or equal to the amount owed.

spiro

Two points here; One OFGE have told all suppliers to replace all token meters as soon as possible, they should not be charging the customer for this. Two, all 3 of the big suppliers have agreed with OFGEM there policy with regard to back charging customers for something that is the suppliers fault (not changing rate on meter). If you search this forum you should find more on this policy.

When the £10 runs out they will have to send an engineer out who will swap the meter. If the new meter they are planning to fir on the 30th is a credit meter, make sure that if an engineer comes out that he fits a credit one as he may fit a key prepayment meter.

ians1

Quick update

E-ON have proven to be very good. They changed the meter to a normal one for free and have retained the Direct Debit discount even though we pay weekly. They also got £30 back from Scottish Power on our behalf and the outstanding bill cancelled.

12/10 for E-ON

ian

mazza111

Same thing happened to me, but I got a larger bill, somewhere along the lines of £210 :eek:. My meter had been updated to the correct tariff, however the local shop was selling stolen power cards, I didn't think to check the receipts, when i checked them back they were all illegible anyway, for every £15 worth of cards i was putting in, he was only linking £5 to my account. So when they came to check the meter, i had put in £210 worth of tokens that were not linked to my account. After a lengthy investigation from SP I got the money back and the shop is now no longer allowed to sell these cards.

spiro

mazza111 wrote: »

Same thing happened to me, but I got a larger bill, somewhere along the lines of £210 :eek:. My meter had been updated to the correct tariff, however the local shop was selling stolen power cards, I didn't think to check the receipts, when i checked them back they were all illegible anyway, for every £15 worth of cards i was putting in, he was only linking £5 to my account. So when they came to check the meter, i had put in £210 worth of tokens that were not linked to my account. After a lengthy investigation from SP I got the money back and the shop is now no longer allowed to sell these cards.

You will find the sale of these is being withdrawn in a number of areas over the next few months. Any person with a token meter fitted who has not had a letter about a meter exchange should contact their supplier in case they have the wrong meter type recorded against the meter.