Ecotricity - prepayment problems

chris1973

Posting this on behalf of my Elderly neighbour.

They have a prepayment Electricity meter, recently their Son found them a better deal online and they switched their supplier. They moved from Npower to Ecotricity and the switch transferred successfully on 28th March.

The problem is, that they haven't had a new prepayment key from Ecotricity. Upon checking with Ecotricity they said that the key was sent out several days before the switch, but it never arrived, They said that they would send a new one out with urgency, but so far that hasn't arrived either, and this was nearly a week ago.

They cannot understand why the key hasn't arrived, there is no known problem with the postal service to their address and to their knowledge no other post has gone missing, so either its massive incompetence on the part of their new supplier of there is a bermuda triangle for Electricity keys locally.

That aside, they are now in a panic because the credit on their meter has run low, they dont have gas and they use Electricity for heating and hot water so their consumption is high and emergency credit probably wouldn't last more than a day, so the question - can they use their 'old' Npower key to top up the meter in the interim, even though they are technically no longer a customer?.

His wife has just returned from Hospital following major heart surgery, so its important that they don't lose supply.

lstar337

Normally you pick your Key up at your local PayPoint store.

Not sure how Ecotricity do it though.

chris1973

Normally you pick your Key up at your local PayPoint store.

Not sure how Ecotricity do it though.

I've not spoken to them, but he has shown me the emails that his Son printed off for him and it does say that it will be posted to the meter address on both occasions. His son even gave them the Mpan and Meter Serial numbers when he asked why the first key hadn't turned up, so they could make sure that they had the correct address before sending out the second one.

I'm now going to drive him into town, to see if he can put a few weeks' credit onto the meter via his old Npower key.

Thanks for the reply.

Joyful

As the new suppliers key has not been in the meter you can continue to use the old suppliers one. Any payments you make from it will still get to the new supplier but your neighbour will still be charged the old suppliers prices as this is what is programmed on the meter.

Ecotricity

chris1973 wrote: »

Posting this on behalf of my Elderly neighbour.

They have a prepayment Electricity meter, recently their Son found them a better deal online and they switched their supplier. They moved from Npower to Ecotricity and the switch transferred successfully on 28th March.

The problem is, that they haven't had a new prepayment key from Ecotricity. Upon checking with Ecotricity they said that the key was sent out several days before the switch, but it never arrived, They said that they would send a new one out with urgency, but so far that hasn't arrived either, and this was nearly a week ago.

They cannot understand why the key hasn't arrived, there is no known problem with the postal service to their address and to their knowledge no other post has gone missing, so either its massive incompetence on the part of their new supplier of there is a bermuda triangle for Electricity keys locally.

That aside, they are now in a panic because the credit on their meter has run low, they dont have gas and they use Electricity for heating and hot water so their consumption is high and emergency credit probably wouldn't last more than a day, so the question - can they use their 'old' Npower key to top up the meter in the interim, even though they are technically no longer a customer?.

His wife has just returned from Hospital following major heart surgery, so its important that they don't lose supply.

Hi Chris

We are sorry to hear your neighbour did not receive their electricity key in time for the supply start date with us here at Ecotricity.

If your neighbour’s supply start date was the 28th March, we would have sent out a key with Ecotricity tariff settings on the 18th March to ensure it arrived by that supply start date. We are sorry to hear this was not the case with your neighbour and the key still hasn’t arrived.

If you would like to ask your neighbour to contact our Pay As You Go team on 01453 760875, we can discuss the options going forward. The quickest thing for us to do would be to provide your neighbour with a TAG reference. This is an 8 digit code which will have Ecotricity’s tariff settings on. If your neighbour takes this to a local shop they will be able to load this onto a brand new key with all the correct tariff settings on.

Your neighbour will be able to top up using the previous supplier’s key in the interim, but it would be best to raise the TAG reference to ensure they are paying the correct tariff.

Please ask your neighbour to give us a call on the number above as we would like to get this resolved as soon as possible.

Thanks

The Ecotricity Team