Prepayment nightmare

bagheera1

I moved into my new home on 17th Dec last year and found that it had a prepayment meter for electricity. I have never had one before so was a bit surprised but worked out what I needed to do. However it was eating my money at a ridiculous rate so I phoned the supplier to come take it out.
I was advised that they could not do this because 'it had been installed after a warrant was issued by a court'. Isnt telling me this information about the previous residents a clear breach of the Data Protection Act?
I know the previous owners well and am extremely uncomfortable that I now know this information. I asked to speak to a supervisor and was then told that since I had small children they may consider taking it out but there would be a charge. I decided to leave it for a while. The money i was putting into this meter was ridiculous - I phoned again and after some persistence - threat of changing suppliers - they said they would take it out for free. This is now mid March.
Eventually a great engineer came to take it out. He looked at the meter and told me that I had been paying off a bad debt that belonged to the previous owners, via the meter. I had overpaid by almost £200 in 3 months. I was outraged. Not only was this a clear failure of process, but I had actually challenged the rate at which the meter was going through my money several times and no-one had told me that this debt existed on the meter. I phoned the supplier and they immediately refunded the overpayment and apologised.

Anyone any idea what if anything I should do next? And pls, anyone who takes over a prepayment meter - check what youre actually paying for!

eurmalian

From the sound of it your supplier thought you were the previous tenant. They told you that the rate was correct even with the debt, gave you information about the warrant against the previous occupier and refused to take the meter out because of said warrant.

This all suggests that they hadn't realised and updated their system to show that you were a new person in the property. It may be that, if it was a large debt, they wanted some sort of proof of tenancy before they would set you up an account and clear eveything, just to prove that you werent the original person merely claiming to have moved.

Was there any discussion about this? Or did they confirm that they definitely had you shown as moving in?

t0rt0ise

What you should do next depends on what you want. What outcome are you looking for?

chanz4

First step check to ensure an accounts in your name, second step if so ask for a meter reset and the debt amount paid be refunded to you.

t0rt0ise

The engineer will have reset the meter and the money has been refunded which is why I asked what they want next.

spiro

Please provide yes/no answers to the following which may help identifiy what happened:

1) Did you phone the suppplier the day you moved in and give them a meter reading?
2) Did they ask for proof of 'change of tenacy' so they knew it was not the old tenant trying to fool them?
3) Did you use the old tenants key?
4) Did the supplier send you your own key and did you use that?

bagheera1

yes i phoned the day i moved in and gave them my details and a meter reading
Im not a tenant, Im the new home owner and they didnt ask for proof of that. They changed all bills etc into my name, closed doiwn my old account etc
I did use the old tenants key (they told me to!)
No.

Hope that helps.

spiro

bagheera1 wrote: »

I did use the old tenants key (they told me to!)

Normally suppliers tell you not to use the old tenants key and they issue you with a new one which programs the meter to your tariff and clears any old debt and debt recovery rate.

By getting you to use an old key they would have to send a command over the network (supplier computer to PPMIP to network operator to shop terminals) to reprogram your key, if that message didn't get to your key then that would account for the fact that the debt was not cleared. Unfortunately I dont think there is a standard flow back to confirm the command has been actioned or not.

Anyway I think you got a result in the fact you haven't had to pay to get the meter exchanged plus you've now got £200 you didn't expect to have.