£250 up front to replace my electric key meter

MrGreen44

Hi,

I have recently moved into a new house and it had a key meter. I asked Eon to replace key meter with a meter and would pay the bill...

They said I would have to keep it a year before they would change it.

So I went with British Gas, they sent me a new key.

I rang them today and they said if I wanted key meter changing I would have to pay £250 up front [which I would get back after a year!]

They said a credit check on me had failed and I want to know why?

Has anyone else had this problem and what did they do about it?

Cardew

Find out why your credit check has failed and challenge it if you feel it is wrong.

Vestra

Have you failed getting credit before or is this the first time?

MrGreen44

Never had a problem before, was wondering if it was the house I am moving into...

RobertoMoir

Credit checks are based on the person - not the house.

Having said that, if you've just moved you maybe don't show up on the electoral role at the new address, which might lower your score, but IIRC that shouldn't really cause an otherwise healthy profile to tank?

Cardew

MrGreen44 wrote: »

Never had a problem before, was wondering if it was the house I am moving into...

As said above, it is now the person although some years ago it used to be the address.

It is not difficult to find out why you have a poor credit record - if indeed that is true!

It might simply be that BG have a protocol that new account holders in a house with pre-pay meters are considered a risk initially; seems also that EON take that view.

MrGreen44

Well I am a new British Gas customer, but what upset me more was the fact that when I applied for meter to be changed was never told about deposit. Was informed I would get a new key that struck me as odd because that was the reason for joining british gas in the first place.

Thanks for all your help

Kev

MrGreen44

£250 up front payment has been made, meter will be fitted Tuesday....

I have to ring them in a months time to set up Direct Debit

Is there any way to find out why I am such a credit risk?

Premier_2

They won't tell you why in their opinion you are a credit risk. It's their assessment.

You can request copies of your credit history from the 3 credit agencies to see if there is anything you can spot on them. (or you can ask the supplier to specify which credit reference agency they used)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2963580.stm

Joyful

I work for BG and sometimes do credit vetting. We have it set fairly high (I believe this is being looked at) but are only told if it passed or failed to our criteria. We are not given info but often it can be down to not being on the voters role for the last 3 years. The advice I always give is to check with the credit Ref agencies to be sure there is nothing on them that you are unaware of. Another thing that can lower your score is if you have had other credit checks done recently ie Mortgage, Credit cards, Store cards etc.