Coin electricity meters

Bubblebath

atolaas wrote: »

Very rare to find a coin operated meter, even as a student 15 years ago we had card operated ones!! If you decide to move into the property you can switch to a rival energy supplier and they will change the meter free of charge. However it can be a difficult process and can take up to 2/3 months to do. I did this in my current property (switched from a prepayment card meter to a standard one). I had quite a lengthly chat with the guy who changed my electric meter. He informed me that its up to the tenant which provider supplies gas/electric to a rented property. Meters are the property of the energy companies and not the landlords. If you want to change them, as a tenant, you can.

Did you read my post before last?

To reiterate - it's the landlord's meter. Of course landlords can have meters -They are submeters and not at all rare.

The OP cannot get the sub-meter changed. Nor can they change supplier.

You can only change supplier if you have a main supply meter and so are the account holder. I guess you didn't ask this guy which supplier uses coin operated meters nowdays )
(There isn't one)

lstar337

My parents had a 50p (the proper big one, which was good for lobbing at your younger brothers shins) coin meter when I was little. We used to love the day the 50p man (as was his name) came to empty it as the surplus was always divided up as our pocket money!

Those were the days!

dogshome

Landlords should not add 'profit' to Gas/Elec bills where they pay the supplier and then pass on the costs to the tenant
BUT
They are allowed to add a 'reasonable' service charge for the effort of the sub-billing - Problem is that there is no definition of 'reasonable' and a greedy Landlord has carte blanche to do what they like.

Best advice is find another flat

[Deleted User]

Another concern I forgot to raise: as a computer scientist I use a desktop PC which I often need to leave running. I'm also concerned about losing power while it's running, or losing power to the fridge, etc!

I guess the obvious answer is that I just make sure there's always money in the meter, but we all make mistakes!

Because I sometimes need to leave experiments running overnight.

If you don't want a sudden power cut to ruin your PC, then invest in a UPS to safely shut down your PC in a power cut.

Also power cuts happen on normal meters too due to faults on the network. It's not just conmen coin meters that cut out. So you should be running a UPS regardless.