Prepayment Meter Charges

ArkaneArkade

Hey Guys,

I was hoping somebody could give me some advice or pointers regarding Prepayment meters. I've always thought I understood them, up until the past week, when it's all gone haywire.

My home uses prepayment Gas and Electric: a card for gas, and a key-stick for electric. I need to top these up at co-op or similar.
Normally I stick about a tenner on each, and top up when I go into the emergency credit - this gives me a few days of electric, and a long time of gas, which I never use.
This week however I received a bill/info letter from my electric provider, which tells me I am £15 in credit, and I don't understand what this means.

Similarly, my girlfriend is on the same system, and has received a letter from her gas supplier saying she is £30 in debit. We only discovered this after topping up £10 yesterday to be gas-less today, and then realising that after putting another £10 in today to have only £3 emergency available, with £7 for debt.
She has been in this house a few months, and has always paid the gas to take out of emergency each time. She has 2 kids, and £3 gas isn't going to get her long (it's an old house, with really poor heating, and is constantly freezing).

Can anybody please help explain to me how this all works, because all I can see is that the system doesn't work, and is only confusing me further, as well as costing a lot more than we can afford.

Premier_2

When you use a PPM it's not exactly the same as a vending machine ... although if it all works correctly, it's easy to understand the confusion.

What actually happens is you have an account. When you buy credit, that is logged as a credit on your account.
Your energy consumption is measured by the meter.
(The fact you can only get energy if you credit the meter is a control function only to help prevenbt things getting out of hand)

Your account is then reconciled between what has been paid and what has been used.
Differences can occur for many reasons, but in your case it may simply be that the meter reading was estimated low or perhaps you had bought credit that had not been used when the meter reading was taken.

In respect of yor gf's meter, the issue could be an over estimated meter reading.
(Delayed updating of price increases on the meter could also cause a debit)

In respect of the meter, that could imply there is an accumulating daily standing charge it is trying to recover (especially if top-ups are infrequent).
Going into emergency can be an issue too as that normally is required to be repaid first (but I think there are some limits that apply)
You say £7 went to debt repayment. This suggest that your gf has had a debt recovery added to the meter for repayment of an earlier debt.
However again, limits apply to this I thought and so when you credit the meter you should get at least some gas irrespective of (accruing) debts on the meter.

KimYeovil

Your first error is to only top-up when in emergency. You should continually top up as your schedule demands - going to emergency only confuses things (as the meter does not charge you for tier 1/standing charges/arrears whilst in emergency but these do still accrue and have to be paid eventually). Once you do top-up 70% goes to pay off these accrued charges. That is where you are getting the only-receiving-£3-from-£10 from.

Any debts are, of course, in addition to arrears of charges. Remember when in emergency you are not paying for any of these. If you do have debts (other than accrued charges) then they can be set up at less than £3.50 per week.