Pay-as-You-Go Electricity

house78

Hi

I am probably missing an obvious website to do this on...but I cant find something so I'm giving this a go.

Long story short..just moved into a flat. Electricity is a £1 meter (i.e. I put pound coins in to get electrocity). It seems to be quite keen on these pound coins and I've put about £10 in over 3 days. This seems expensive to me. I'm only ever using a few things - laptop/tv/digibox.

The box says I am being charged 50p per kW/hour. Is this ridiculous or sound about right (and I'm only just learning about how much electricity I use now I'm paying for it as I go?

Any help appreciated, thanks.

Snakeeyes21

Thats very expencive, i take it your LL collects the funds and sets the price, im sure theres some kind of regulation that stops LL charging high prices like this.
im with ebico and the most they charge depending where you live is 14p per kwh. So yourrt is tripple that.
is there anyway you could find out who the supplier is so you can get them to put in a proper prepay meter that takes a key / card that you topup in a shop.
if the LL doesnt tell you who the supplier is, there should be a meter there aswell, if you take the meter number and phone the national grid they should be able to tell you who the current supplier is

adprob

Hi

This IS high. I believe that landlords are not allowed to charge you extra for the electricity.

Unfortunately I think you will find it nigh on impossible to change suppliers. If your landlord has a coin meter in the property then it seems likely that his name is on the bills with electricity supplier. You would need to take over responsibility for the billing before you could change.

Also suppliers cannot remove the coin meter. This is your landlords property and will be situated after the main meter which means the energy supplier has no responsibility for it.

Premier_2

Correct. Landlords can only charge the same price as it costs them to supply the electricity i.e. they are not allowed to derive a profit from re-selling electricity.

Depending on the set up (e.g. converted property), it sounds possible the LL has installed his own separate sub meters and is billed in total on the suppliers main meter. This will make it difficuylt for you to have the supply metered direct from the supplier. But it still doesn't allow the LL to derive profit from reselling electricity.

Contact the CAB or Shelter for further advice.

James123_2

50p a KW/H is robbery of the highest order! I pay 9p on an online tariff. The costs, even with a coin meter, should be well under 20p. Speak to CAB.

house78

Thanks for all these replies, they have reassured me that I am being swindled. I didnt want to go off on one if I had no rights.

Thanks again for all your advice.