Help with prepayment meter & debt

rose111

Hi there

Hoping someone can help me here, I owe the gas and electric people £500 as I wasnt paying enough from the past year. I offered to pay £100 with my card and an extra £50 a month till it was paid but they said I wasnt allowed to do that and the only way to now clear the debt apart from paying it as a lump sum is to get a pre-payment meter.
I have guys coming on friday to fit this for me, after reading some posts on here I am shocked that they will take about 70% of every top up to go towards the debt!
I have a family here and a young baby so I need to always be able to heat the house but Im worried I will struggle to keep money in it.
How does it work? If I go put say £20 on my card what will they take towards the debt? Will it be about £15 leaving me with only £5 for that week which tbh I know will last me a day or so.
I do want to get this paid off as soon as possible but I feel like whatever I put in will go out straight away.
Is there anyway I can get the meter set at say £10 a week to pay off the debt and anything else I put in can go towards gas? And then will they accept extra payments by phone to go towards the debt? As I could pay the £50 odd per month extra towards the debt.
Once the debt is cleared can I go back to paying monthly or do I have to continue with the meter?
Also I signed up to get my house phone through them also and got given a voucher to send back in with my details which gives me £10 of my electricity bill every month. How does this work with the pre-payment meter?
Sorry for all the questions, Im just really worried about heating my house over winter

Thanks in advance for any help!! :beer:

elaina79

I had a prepayment meter installed last month and they had told me that they were going to take £12 per week for my debt. There is also the rental charge for the meter itself that they take from the top up, but I think this is only £1 odds per week.
I am with EDF and when I asked them if I could make extra payments they said only by increasing the amount taken through the meter. I worked out that at £12 per week it's gonna take me 2 years to pay off my debt!!!
Apparetly though with EDF you don't actually pay anymore for the electricity you use. Haven't checked it though.

Mankysteve

The standard debt payment is £15 a week once it's taken that amount you don't have to pay any more toward the debt If you put £20 in on a Monday it'll take £15 for debt then the rest is for the energy you use any more top ups you put in will go straight onto energy credit.

The repayment can go as low as £5 is you can persuade them.

karenx

My friend has the same problem, her meter is set at £10 a week but she is looking to get this lifted to a higher amount. I assume by your post mankysteve that she can get it set higher?

markharding557

they will probably lower the payment if you ask but of course lower payments means taking longer to pay off.
only you know what you can afford.
try to put credit on the same day as the debt is taken as it will cause less confusion for you.
when it's paid off you can change meter but they may charge and/or reqire a deposit

Mankysteve

Yeh they'll should change it to higher payback rate.

C_Mababejive

After a learning curve,which might be painful,you should gradually become more aware of usage and will probably use less.

At least it stops further debt and allows repayment in manageable amounts.

marmitedog

There is no standard amount, only a standard timeframe in which they wish to recover the amount - 12 months for most suppliers.

So if you owe £500, it will be £10 per week. It will be time based debt recovery. This means it will recover arrears from previous weeks if you haven't topped it up enough.

The 70% figure is the MAXIMUM it will take out of any credit. ie even if you're massively in arrears to the meter, it should still give you enough for basic heating. Thats the idea anyway - as others have said, you'll soon get used to it.

Fire_Fox

Why are they fitting a prepayment meter for a debt accrued by paying too low an amount? Usually that is dealt with by increasing direct debits: prepayment meters are usually used for those who fail to pay bills, miss DD payments or are consistently late??

C_Mababejive

Fire_Fox wrote: »

Why are they fitting a prepayment meter for a debt accrued by paying too low an amount? Usually that is dealt with by increasing direct debits: prepayment meters are usually used for those who fail to pay bills, miss DD payments or are consistently late??

I think it usually happens that there is an end of year reconciliation whereby they have taken a reading,found a significant shortfall eg £500 and decide that they do not wish to extend that amount of credit and so send a bill. Consumer get bill>gets a shock> doesnt have £500>prepayment meter.