British Gas Prepayment Meter

[Deleted User]

MissCJT wrote: »

I was told that I've only been paying the standing charge since Oct last year and there is a debt showing £2.70.

Sorry, I was referring to the prepay electric meter with screens "A " and "S", but the same thing applies to the gas meters with the debt screen (for debt added from a credit meter ) on 26 , weekly standing charge should be less than the electric meters. Standing charge would start building up if you don`t credit the meter regularly. The yearly standing charges for gas would be something like £50 or £60 a year and around the £70 and upwards for electric prepays
If possible please change the meters for credit meters and go onto a yearly fix payable by monthly or quarterly direct debit .Big savings on the higher tariffs of prepay meters. Eg in my area ( South Yorks ) with BG you go down from over 5p kwhr for gas to 3.8 p kwhr and for electric ,down from 14p kwhr to 11 p kwhr, both prepay and credit meters are paying the same amount of daily standing charge of 25 p a day
Last year the suppliers were ordered to scrap the confusing 2 tier system ( where standing charge was payable in the first batch of units used each quarter ) and go onto a daily standing charge. British Gas referred to the 2 tier system as a "no standing charge tariff " which was a bit of a con as standing charge in nearly all cases was being paid.

SwanJon

As sacsquacco says, before everyone was moved to a standing charge, the meters charged more for the first tier of energy used - covering the cost of a standing charge for the average user.

However, this charge was calculated daily in quarterly blocks.
So, for example if the threshold was 10 and you used 20 on day 1, you would be charged 10 at tier 1 and 10 at tier 2. After 10 days like this you would have used 200, 100 at Tier 1 and 100 at Tier 2.
However if you then stopped using gas for 10 days, the meter would recalculate so at the end of 20 days you would have used 200, all at Tier 1. If there was no credit on the meter this difference would build up as a debt.
This is effectively what happens to all non-prepayment customers.

Also, if you used the emergency credit this was only charged at tier 2, then once you topped up the same recalculation was made to balance things out.
Now, no standing charge is taken while in emergency credit, but is recovered when you next top up.

This should all have been explained to you when you called in, so there would have been a case for feedback.

Where does it show the £2.70 debt?

If you put up what it shows on the different screens I can decode it for you.