Southern Electric..Pre-payment meters

skibadee

I wanted to change suppliers as changed to Southern and appear to be more expensive than previous supplier [ powergen/e-on ]....anyway Southern won't let us change until we pay outstanding bill of £240....which we can't afford to pay in full....spoke to Southern today and said we'd stay with them if we could come to a acceptable payment plan [ they had increased DD from £35 to £91 in December...which we couldn't afford to pay ].....well they said if we make a £100 payment tomorrow then they will spread the remaining £140 over 3 mths then set up a payment plan.......by which time obviously we will be owing more!!
Where do we stand re asking for a pre-payment meter instead?

Fire_Fox

A prepayment meter will cost you more per unit than you are paying at present. Best option is to take a hard look at your usage patterns and cut back on wasted energy.

KimYeovil

Why on earth would you want to switch to a more expensive pre payment meter? The first £342 you put in such a meter will only give you access to £100 of the more expensive energy to use.

You have been given three chances to pay your bill and rejected all three.

1) The standard keeping an eye on your meter to check how much you were using and estimating the cost and putting money aside to cover that over the quarter. (Not done.)

2) Increasing the debit by £51 to pay it off. (Rejected)

3) A payment of £100 followed by three payments of £47. (Rejected)

How many more chances do you want Southern to give you? Those of us who are poor have to watch what we spend.

skibadee

KimYeovil wrote: »

Why on earth would you want to switch to a more expensive pre payment meter? The first £342 you put in such a meter will only give you access to £100 of the more expensive energy to use.

You have been given three chances to pay your bill and rejected all three.

1) The standard keeping an eye on your meter to check how much you were using and estimating the cost and putting money aside to cover that over the quarter. (Not done.]Will be done from now on!!

2) Increasing the debit by £51 to pay it off. (Rejected)A huge jump in DD payments which wasn't so much rejected as was not financially possible

3) A payment of £100 followed by three payments of £47. (Rejected)This has not been rejected it is the path we will no doubt be following

How many more chances do you want Southern to give you? Those of us who are poor have to watch what we spend.

I don't want MORE chances...I just want to be able to come to an aggreement that is one that is financially possible [ yes I do realise to do this our electricty usage has got to reduce too ].......unfortunately we, as many others are too are
suffering severe financial hardship at the moment....and I just wanted some advice as to the best way to deal with it.

Magentasue

If you can do option 3), that would be better than prepay. Then you'll have the chance over the summer to cut back and build a credit balance to see you through the winter.

If money is tight, you need to work out how many kwh you can afford, and meter read every week to keep in line. If you think you'll go astray, prepay will stop that, but it will cost you more and is less convenient.