Are pre-payment meters that bad?

Faith177

I have been on ppm for years now and much prefer it. Mine is a mid terrace 3 bed house with 2 regular occupants and 1 additional 1 a couple of nights a week.

I have both electric and gas. Gas costs me £20 every 5-6 weeks including in the winter. I have a boiler but stopped using it years ago now I just use gas for cooking and hot water.

For heat I have a gas fire in the front room a gas bottle costs me £35 and last me about 4-6 weeks depending on how much I use it. Often in the winter I will curl up on the sofa with a duvet and a couple of hot water bottles and wear a thick jumper and socks and I'm lovely and comfy especially as I hate being cold.

I don't like sleeping in hot bedrooms do I just use hot water bottles in the bed and have 2 duvets.

As for electric that's a little higher that's £40 a month but my housemate does have a tendency to leave things on over night and we do use the tumbler dryer a lot.

I switched to ppm after British Gas left with a £600 debt after getting my payments wrong. I'm now with edf and the ppm are perfect for my household

So all in my electric is £480 a year and my gas is about £160-200

lstar337

GwylimT wrote: »

Being on a meter you cannot choose your tarif, we also weren't able to spread the costs of our fuel over a year so you need a lot of cash in the winter months, I don't know if its still the case but when we had ours you could only put £50 on your card in one go, so we were topping it up a lot at our nearest pay point shop 16 miles away!

I put £60 on ours yesterday, so there is no such restriction in our case.

lstar337

I like the PPM, but I wouldn't ditch a credit meter for one.

kwmlondon

I was mighty annoyed when I moved into the house and found PPMs for gas & electric, especially when in the blind panic of trying to sort out all the problems in the house I realised I was paying off the previous occupants £1100 unpaid bills. That was easily sorted, but we put £10 on the gas and £40 on the electric when we moved in on the 23rd of August. We've used about £5 in gas (cooker and heating is gas, but we rarely heat the water tank) and have used about £8 in electricity, pretty impressive since we've been using power tools and have an electric shower.

However, I've changed to EDF (kept getting them confused with EDL and nearly ended up with a racist tariff) and can change to DD in about a month as I'm pretty good at budgeting and also have the 1-2-3 account so get money back from fuel bills, and the PPMs have a standing charge.

gay_guy

I am on a pre-payment meter for my gas and electric and this is the best way to be honest as I am in control of my spending.

I would hate to have a credit meter and pay by direct debit as I could not always afford it since I am only on JSA.

I top up my electric £10.00 a week and I am shocked its not going down fast even though I leave my LCD tv and my pc on 24/7

I haven't topped up my gas quite a lot in the past few months due to a heatwave however Its starting to get really cold now and winter is neally here so I will be topped up more in the coming months with winter

Overall if you on a low income like JSA pre-payment meters are better then direct debits.

Nada666

gay_guy wrote: »

Overall if you on a low income like JSA pre-payment meters are better then direct debits.

Rubbish. Why would someone whose money was tight choose to buy the same amount of product but pay more per unit? And surely it makes it more difficult in winter - you need the discipline to keep the money aside. If you have the discipline to do that then you have the discipline to not consume unnecessary energy.

Alternatively, if you want to pay the standard tariff price, pay quarterly - far preferable to prepayment meters - you only have one bill to find once each quarter - no struggling week after week to find the money.

throwoff

I think it all depends on the property and the meter.

My brother is on pre-payment, was at his previous property, moved to a similar size house and saw his spend on Gas and Electric drop by almost 20 pounds overall.

Still use the same heat etc just seems to be a combination of more effective insulation and a much newer key meter.

markharding557

GwylimT said:

Being on a meter you cannot choose your tarif, we also weren't able to spread the costs of our fuel over a year so you need a lot of cash in the winter months

You can change supplier.

You can spread the cost over the year by building up credit over the warmer months.

I credit £15 pw on my gas gas meter regardless of how much i actually use, result > i currently have over £200 on the gas ready for winter.:)

Nada666

markharding557 wrote: »

You can change supplier.

You can spread the cost over the year by building up credit over the warmer months.

I credit £15 pw on my gas gas meter regardless of how much i actually use, result > i currently have over £200 on the gas ready for winter.:)

But if you have the good sense to do this you have the discipline to use (and not use with abandon) a credit meter. Why pay the premium?

Andy_WSM

sacsquacco wrote: »

This is a money saving forum so the advice every time is get rid of prepays if possible, can always use a weekly budget card to save for the quarterly bill if you dont want a direct debit, say £10 a week. Nada666 is correct, why pay the premium top price for anything if its cheaper by another method. If money is tight, all the more important to get the cheapest deal possible . Today I took Martins advice on Radio 5 Live and switched to Npowers 4 year fix for my electric at 11.5 kwhr. I was on a temporary standard tariff with BG at 13.2 kwhr, so as Martin says , its a no brainer. All advice to anyone on a prepay meter should be to change asap

Hmm, I just run a price check and they are quoting 15.719p per kWh on their 4 year fix, which is about 2p more than I currently pay to EON.