Charge to swap from pre-payment meter?

kalico

Dear All,

We have a house that was rented to the classic 'Tenants from hell'. We managed to get it back, in a terrible state and with no chance of recovering the thousands of pounds arrears.

The gas and electricity meters in the house have been changed by the tenants to be pre-payment ones. Probably, the utility firm (E.on) insisted on it.

I've finally got E.on to change the account back into my name, but they want £50 to change the meters back to the regular type. I told them the story and they don't seem to care and will not budge. Even when I said I'd switch suppliers, they claimed that "all suppliers have such a charge".

I know that I've had meters changed back from pre-payment to regular ones before, and it has never cost a penny. That said, the supplier does make you jump through a lot of hoops, since I think they suspect it is the tenant who is trying to do it. They also run credit checks. But have never charged for doing it.

My question is here to see if anyone has gone through this process before and what happened? And does anyone know of a utility company that will not charge me? I could just switch to them and then ask for the meters to be changed.

Thanks for any help and guidance.

Premier_2

You've lost thousands of pounds and you are worried about £50 charge?
You might be able to get more than that in cashback just for changing supplier.

Ring round and find out what others will charge.
I could tell you but I don't want to mislead you, as a supplier that may change them for 'free' may not be prepared to change them for you or may require £300+ security deposit. If you call the suppliers, they will give you a personal quote

Don't forget, just like there's no such thing as a free lunch, there's also no such thing as a free meter change ... the cost will be included in the tariff somewhere unless the supplier plans on going bust.

kalico

I'm not sure that losing thousands to an ex-tenant means I should stop trying to save money in the future.

My ideal is to swap suppliers, get some cashback from Quidco or similar and the new supplier swap the meters for nothing and have a good tariff.

As the house is unoccupied at the moment, the tariff is the last in the list, though nice to have of course.

skint-student-nurse

We had the same problem with our tenant that got our standard meter changed to a PPM within 12 weeks of being in the tenancy :eek: npower refused to budge within 12 months so we changed to edf,and after 6 weeks of having the PPM with them, thay changed it back for free but we are in a contract with them. HTH

t0rt0ise

Try British Gas too. They changed mine for me for free.

spiro

As already said if you dont pay up front, it will be paid for somehow even under general operating costs. More and more suppliers are moving towards individuals paying for the services they need i.e. meter exchange.

DX2

t0rt0ise wrote: »

Try British Gas too. They changed mine for me for free.

Same here mine were done last week free of charge via BG.

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena

Hi kalico,

I just wanted to confirm the correct process for removing pre-payment meters from E.ON.

As you own the property, you wouldn't need to wait the 12 months before we would consider to remove the meters.

We charge £50 per meter, this is to cover the cost of the appointment.

E.ON may also carry out an external credit check and you would need to pay your future bills by Direct Debit.

Helena

kalico

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena wrote: »

Hi kalico,

I just wanted to confirm the correct process for removing pre-payment meters from E.ON.

As you own the property, you wouldn't need to wait the 12 months before we would consider to remove the meters.

We charge £50 per meter, this is to cover the cost of the appointment.

E.ON may also carry out an external credit check and you would need to pay your future bills by Direct Debit.

Helena

Hi Helena,

Yes, this is what I was told when I called in to have them changed. It just seems a little unfair that a tenant can have them changed without our permission and then we must pay to have regular meters put back in. And I understand fully the concept of pay per use (in this case of a meter swapping service) before anyone starts to tell me that message again.

If we had a couple of changes of tenant per year (unlikely, I agree, but possible) then this would cost £200 per annum. Ouch!

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena

kalico wrote: »

Hi Helena,

Yes, this is what I was told when I called in to have them changed. It just seems a little unfair that a tenant can have them changed without our permission and then we must pay to have regular meters put back in. And I understand fully the concept of pay per use (in this case of a meter swapping service) before anyone starts to tell me that message again.

If we had a couple of changes of tenant per year (unlikely, I agree, but possible) then this would cost £200 per annum. Ouch!

Hi kalico,

I do understand your points, but the tenant doesn't need to ask the landlords permission as they are responsible for the bills, so they have the choice of how to pay, or if they don't pay E.ON can insist on the pre-payment meter.

Some landlords appear to prefer to have pre-payment meters, as then they know the utility bills are being paid.

As you say, a couple of tenants per year, could mean a couple of meter changes and this is the reason that we have to charge for this work.

Helena