Prepayment is it a con??

wobble2

We have a prepayment meter by EDF. We have just started to monitor our usage/payments on line.:D In December we are about £380 in credit:j , then the bill was paid which left us £255 in credit. Now, the bill was upto 15th December and I was in credit by £255 on the 29th December. So the is no way we would use £255 worth of electric in two weeks:mad: . I contacted EDF and ask for a credit, to be told the money was not ours:eek: . Now I thought the prepayment meter worked in the following way. Am i right or wrong?

1. Payment is made on a meter which is credited to your account
2. when the bill is due the bill is paid from you account in credit
3. Any money left is not the electric companies but ours

spiro

Sort of right;

1) You vend, credit goes onto meter and details of payment & reading sent to supplier
2) You use the energy your credit purchased minus any charges for standing charge, debt recovery.
3) Annually supplier produce a statement in which they work out the amount of energy you have used (based on readings) and what that costs plus any other charges, they also detail the payments you have made. They then subtract payments from bill to which if everything is set correctly will result in zero balance.

Dont see from you post how you say you were in credit, the only credit you have is the unused credit on your meter the rest has been used to cover the cost of energy used plus any other charges.

Going forward with Smart meters it is possible that suppliers wont even issue statements as they will class the meter as master in the same way as PAYG mobile phones.

wobble2

Thank you for your reply. I have copied some of my statement from EDF.

Balances from your previous statements Balance
Balance following bill dated 29 January 2008 £191.98 CR
Balance following bill dated 29 April 2008 £168.88 CR
Balance following bill dated 29 July 2008 £ 89.46 CR
Balance following bill dated 15 October 2008 £223.27 CR
Next Bill due 12 January 2009
This quarter's activity In Out Balance
Previous Balance £223.27 CR
Payment 27 October 2008 £31.00 £254.27 CR
Payment 27 October 2008 £49.00 £303.27 CR
Current balance £303.27 CR

Now as you see I am £303.27 in credit. When the bill dated 12th Jan is deducted.The amout in credit will be alot more then the elecrtic used from the 12th to date.

Oct bill went though within a week. So in the week I used £223.27 worth of electric?

Also looking at the statement of the 23 Jan 09 I have not made a payment on the key since oct 2008 so I am even more in credit.

regards

usignuolo

See my post above about EDF trying to double my direct debit. When I phoned to complain, they added up my last 4 bills and divided by 12 and said I should be paying £65 per month (I am paying £60 at present) yet they had sent a letter saying I needed to pay £130! Phone them and ask them to do the same calculation and see what your dd should be. They can change it over the phone for you.