Keeping warm fot the winter? Gas

Fire_Fox

The best way to pay off this debt without going broke is to get out of the mindset that you need four hours heating. Pop a spare duvet on the sofa to snuggle under, consider a cheap electric blanket for your beds, start wearing an extra fleece and thick socks around the house, set the thermostats no higher than 18C. I haven't had my heating on as yet, and don't intend to until it snows/ heavy frost, I am saving my money for when I really need it!

timmmers

KimYeovil wrote: »

I genuinely can not understand the mindset of people on a low income who prefer to pay a small amount off their debts year-in year-out instead of just biting the bullet and living on next-to-nothing for a month or two.

Well that's blatently obvious.

Good luck to you when something crappy happens and you need advice.

Careless choice of words there too ...considering the OPs recent loss.

Personally I'd guess there may be a services organisation that may assist in the circumstances? IF not. there should be.

t

dogshome

Hi type2tattoo - Sorry to read of your problems, which certainly haven't been helped by SE's errors in meter re-sets. The £450 debt is a lot of money which SE are entitled to get back, however, SE errors have given you the chance to try to renegotiate the rate at which they are recovering the debt..
Write to SE heading the letter Complaint, listing the meter reset errors and demanding to know what the outstanding balance is today, and a statement as to the amounts collected against the debt and the dates they were paid - The reason for this is that at the outset, SE would have set a Debt repayment amount to recover the debt over a fixed amount of time, but because of thier meter set errors the debt repayment figure was not being paid on time, so they have upped the amount so to get the debt cleared to the original time scale.
Best of luck

KimYeovil

Mankysteve and Dogshome suggestion is one strategy. But it is a pretty dumb one. £5 per week over 2 years £3 over 3 years? Complete madness. If you do that you will also be stuck on SE's prepayment tariff for two years with no opportunity to switch to whichever company provides the cheapest tariff. And no opportunity to switch to a credit meter for an even greater saving. Wonderful advice there - be tied for two or three years paying more than necessary instead of sorting it out over a couple of months.

Now if your mortgage/rent have to come off your £100 then my suggestion does not work and I apologise. But when most people say they have £100 per week they have usually separated that out already. So my alternative solution is entirely affordable. And for most situations is more sensible (and cheaper in the long run).