Purchaser of house changing supplier when former occupier had a prepayment meter.

desthemoaner

Evening all. My daughter moved into her new house ( new as in "new to her", it was built in 1895) last Friday. On occupation we discovered that the seller had a prepayment gas and electric meter: card for the gas, key for the electric, registered with Scottish Power. He must have been in debt because when she topped up the card, which was almost out of credit when she moved in, it immediately swallowed four quid of her ten pound top up. 
Anyhow, she wants to change supplier, and to get rid of the prepayment meter. She went online to arrange a comparison and switch, but during the comparison was presented with the most unwelcome information that SP would demand £150 to take their prepayment meter away. So we contacted  Octopus directly, and they've said that they can take her on as a customer, IF she has a standard prepayment meter rather than the smart version. She has the smart prepayment meter, but I don't understand why that might be a difficulty for a new supplier. Anyone come across this before and/ or have any advice to take us forward?  TIA. 

Neil_Jones

Stop right now and do not use any existing cards/keys.

Phone up Scottish Power if you haven't done so already and tell them you have moved into this house, here are the meter readings, can I have new cards please and new accounts.  Top up with those new ones and those new ones only.  If you use the old ones you will be paying off the previous owner's debt and it will only cause issues down the line.

Once you have started using your own account and keys, then look at switching.

Note that if its a smart meter a supplier may be able to convert it remotely into a credit meter.  The Octopus thing may be that the meter is an smets1 one, which become dumb if you move away from the provider who installed them, so it could be that if they took over the supply, they can't convert the meter so it would have to be physically replaced.

Anomnomnomaly

When we bought this house, it had prepayment meters. We contacted the suppliers and informed that we'd purchased the house (it was a repossession) and they came out and installed new meters (not prepayment ones).

desthemoaner

Many thanks for the replies. It did occur to me that by using the old cards she might be paying off his debt, but so much else is happening right now that the issue had temporarily been set aside.  I’ll contact my daughter right away and tell her to contact SP with her meter readings, get new cards then arrange  the switch. 

desthemoaner

 Just for information, I rang SP last Friday 9th October, and the lady I spoke to was extremely pleasant and efficient. She registered my daughter as a customer, assigning her account numbers etc, and sent out a new prepayment card and key in the post. Amazingly, they arrived the next day. So she now has her own prepayment method and will be switching to Octopus as soon as practicable. It turns out that the meters aren't Smart meters at all: they just look like Smart meters to someone who hasn't seen a prepayment meter before. So there should be no problem with the switch.