Prepayment Meter in new house

mjohno86

Morning All,

I've recently moved into a house which has a prepayment meter in for the electricity and a standard credit meter for the gas.

As i'm used to the credit meter in my other previous properties I wanted a credit meter installed however the supplier said I wasn't allowed one in unless I paid £100s for the new one.

Is this common practice? As I will just stick with the prepay meter in that case.

Wywth

mjohno86 wrote: »

Morning All,

I've recently moved into a house which has a prepayment meter in for the electricity and a standard credit meter for the gas.

As i'm used to the credit meter in my other previous properties I wanted a credit meter installed however the supplier said I wasn't allowed one in unless I paid £100s for the new one.

Is this common practice? As I will just stick with the prepay meter in that case.

Which supplier has quoted you £100s as that is not common at all.

Are you sure that price doesn't relate to a security deposit? If so, agreeing to pay monthly by DD often helps waive such a deposit (but not always - it depends on your status)

mjohno86

Was scottish power, the house was a repossesion so I presume the previous owners accounts with them were bad and that is why.

The missus just confirmed to me it was £200 for a replacement.

chanz4

sounds like a £150 security deposit and £50 meter change fee. best togo to your old supplier.

Wywth

mjohno86 wrote: »

Was scottish power, the house was a repossesion so I presume the previous owners accounts with them were bad and that is why.

The missus just confirmed to me it was £200 for a replacement.

Don't listen to her! She probably wants to spend that on a new fur coat or summat.

Call them yourself and discover SP will only charge £45.91 for such a meter change
(if they agree to provide such a meter)

mjohno86

I know its been a while since I last posted but they confirmed today that I would need to pay £150 which would be refunded after twelve months and a engineer fee of £50! Joke!

divadee

Mum has this problem when she moved in a home with pp meters.

She moved to southern electric who would replace for a credit meter free of charge and no deposit. It worked really well for her.

chanz4

so I was right then

1940sGal

That is standard actually. It costs quite a bit to change a meter and they have to do a credit check if you want to swap from prepayment to credit. With PP obviously they are getting money there and then but with credit/direct debit they aren't guaranteed the money hence why they do a credit check.

mjohno86

Indeed you were chanz! In regards to the credit check etc they quoted me that without even doing one. If they charged based on my credit score then it wouldn't of been £200!

Anyway spoke to both Npower and EDF last night, EDF don't charge anything for a replacement meter, you just have to be with them for 28 days first. With Npower its a £60 charge (for the engineer) but they will do it straight away!