Broken prepayment meter

MeterMan

Law is, the supplier needs to provide you with the ability to use electricity, as your credit hasn't yet ran out, you're not without the use of electricity.

I have seen around 100 of this issue you have and yes, its cause by a surge. It happens during power cuts too.

You will eventually run out of electricity and then you can call up, say you're off supply, let them know you have a vulnerability (under 3 year old(borrow one)) and they are legally obliged to come and get you back on supply.

I am guessing the only reason why they wont come out until the credit has gone, is because they dont want to be out of pocket when working out how much money to give you back.

You could bite the bullet, turn off your fuse box and say the electric has ran out, of course you will probably be found out by the meter man that turns up, but it may get done sooner and at a convenient time for yourself

MovingForwards

If you have lodged a complaint, re-raise it and ask them for a deadlock letter or written confirmation of the outcome of their Complaint response.

With that you then complain to the 'energy ombudsman'.

Ladystardust78

Andy CF, that is our exact meter. The screen is blank, except for a very faint 1 (i think) right at the very start of the display, above the serial number on the front. It no longer beeps when the key is inserted.

During the storm, there was a surge, think it was caused by ball lightning. The next town over had ball lightning, which caused havoc with the internet there. The power also went off at least twice, maybe a further time during the night. The building my husband works in had problems with their electrics through the night, so seems likely there were further outages. I didn't check my meter until the next morning, as I'd checked credit before the storm happened.

As for turning it off at the mains and calling someone out, this must of been done by someone somewhere before ��, spark advised if an engineer turns up and we have power, he'll down tools, go home and we'll be charged a fee.

I guess, maybe, our only action now is to sit out the 4 weeks spark advised. If it goes off, then we'd get emergency call out (i can't borrow a 3 year old sadly). If it doesn't go out, well it maybe wont and surely spark won't want that to continue. Although time will tell, so far they've been a headache to deal with.

They're 100% adamant there's no way the meter can work without credit. My distributor said it can, but spark can't publicly say that, due to meter tampering.

[Deleted User]

Ladystardust78 wrote: »

Andy CF, that is our exact meter. The screen is blank, except for a very faint 1 (i think) right at the very start of the display, above the serial number on the front. It no longer beeps when the key is inserted.

During the storm, there was a surge, think it was caused by ball lightning. The next town over had ball lightning, which caused havoc with the internet there. The power also went off at least twice, maybe a further time during the night. The building my husband works in had problems with their electrics through the night, so seems likely there were further outages. I didn't check my meter until the next morning, as I'd checked credit before the storm happened.

As for turning it off at the mains and calling someone out, this must of been done by someone somewhere before ��, spark advised if an engineer turns up and we have power, he'll down tools, go home and we'll be charged a fee.

I guess, maybe, our only action now is to sit out the 4 weeks spark advised. If it goes off, then we'd get emergency call out (i can't borrow a 3 year old sadly). If it doesn't go out, well it maybe wont and surely spark won't want that to continue. Although time will tell, so far they've been a headache to deal with.

They're 100% adamant there's no way the meter can work without credit. My distributor said it can, but spark can't publicly say that, due to meter tampering.

Spark do not know what they are talking about. I do some work for them, the old Spark were one of the worst suppliers for dealing with meter tampering. They had a bad reputation with us who work on revenue protection duties on electric meters. Their customer service people will be largely ignorant and badly trained when it comes to something like blank prepay meters.
Maybe I only see the rogue meters but I can guarantee that prepay electric meters can still work without having to add credit once they have received a surge which has made it go blank screen.
I also find hundreds of credit meters with blank screens which work fine but stop recording the kwh usage. I would nt pay much attention to what a Spark employee says in his/her call centres

Ladystardust78

Thanks for your response.

As I spent some time googling it after it happened, I did get the idea spark had no clue what they were on about. Obviously, I'm just a customer, so their opinion matters more than mine.....at least in their opinion. They are super frustrating to deal with. I'll be glad when this gets resolved, whenever that may happen, and I can look elsewhere!

Talldave

Why not just throw your electricity cash into a savings account and do nothing?

Ladystardust78

Nice idea talldave, but surely at some point they're going to decide i owe money.....even though they've said it's not possible to run off mains, only credit. Honestly, I don't trust anything they say!

AndyCF

I was going to add if it did turn off at some point, don't forget to remove and re-insert the key to attempt to activate the £5 (probably a fiver) E.Credit and use that up. Might as well have that if they are playing such silly games...

This does lead to a slightly interesting quandry though, if as stated it will never ever turn off *and* they won't come out until it does, then what about payments ? The advice above about putting a bit aside is not a bad one I suppose, look at what you used last year this time if you can perhaps (they send a yearly statement I think) maybe...

You do need it sorting soon though as it not fair that either they don't get paid nor is it fair in any way shape or form they could possibly enforce an 'estimated' bill on you to pay as they could say "we can't get a real reading"

You could almost guarantee if the supplier could not charge at all for a broken meter in this fashion they would be out to fix it asap.


Same in a vague way when I had three meter swaps due to faults**, not the suppliers fault, merely extremely bad luck in what they were given to fit. I suggested (as a joke, and I made it clear it was a jest/joke) at the time if they were required to leave it unmetered until it was fixed, how long would it take to fix then Best it would of been fixed that day!

** For what it is worth: Very early (testing phase before their main rollout) Smart to token, token to smart (faulty) resulting in token put back same day , token to smart again, again this one did not work either lol , token to smart (this one actually worked!)

mac.d

Talldave wrote: »

Why not just throw your electricity cash into a savings account and do nothing?

I'd def do the first bit of Talldave's suggestion. You have already contacted them about it, so as long as your electric continues to work (and it sounds from the meter readers like there is a chance it will), there's no point worrying about it until you can take your complaint to the ombudsman.

In the meantime, put your usual top up cash into a savings account, specifically to pay the bill when it does eventually get sorted. I'd agree with AndyCF that it's a good idea if you can look back on previous statements to see roughly what your actual kwh usage is, so that when they do hit you with a bill, you will be able to make sure they base it on your previous usage.

Ladystardust78

I've never had a bill. Roughly we're about £100-160 a month in top ups. Most days pre-storm we'd been about £3-4. Will keep money aside, although I think debt would be added to new meter, sure that was on their website somewhere.

Time will tell i guess. Now 15 days from last top up, so anything's possible