Prepaid electricity meter issue -where do I stand?

juliapal

Hello everyone 

I have a prepaid electricity meter (British Gas) and in view of the rising bills I have followed Martin's advice and have put maximum money on it before 1st April. I took a picture on 31st March. By doing so, I would have paid March rates until next top-up.

Now on Tuesday 5th we had a very brief power cut (whole area) and my meter's display has gone blank. No amount of button-pressing or key insertion has changed that. I understand this means it needs replacing,but what I'm worried about is that they will use this opportunity to increase my rates and I made huge sacrifices to be able to top up to the max. It would have lasted me at least six months! 

What do you recommend I should do? Wait six months before calling BG?  

Many thanks.

Kind wishes,

Julia

MattMattMattUK

juliapal said:

Hello everyone 

I have a prepaid electricity meter (British Gas) and in view of the rising bills I have followed Martin's advice and have put maximum money on it before 1st April. I took a picture on 31st March. By doing so, I would have paid March rates until next top-up.

Now on Tuesday 5th we had a very brief power cut (whole area) and my meter's display has gone blank. No amount of button-pressing or key insertion has changed that. I understand this means it needs replacing,but what I'm worried about is that they will use this opportunity to increase my rates and I made huge sacrifices to be able to top up to the max. It would have lasted me at least six months! 

What do you recommend I should do? Wait six months before calling BG?  

Many thanks.

Kind wishes,

Julia

Have you tried turning the main breaker off and on again to see if that brings it back to life?

The thing about the large top-up was that it did not guarantee the rates until a later date and some suppliers would have clawed it back from a future top-up. 

My main thought is that it is not the meter that has stopped working, just just it's display. I would also be looking to get it resolved as quickly as possible. 

MWT

MattMattMattUK said:

Have you tried turning the main breaker off and on again to see if that brings it back to life?

The meter should be on the grid side of any breakers accessible to the customer, so that shouldn't work.

juliapal said:

What do you recommend I should do? Wait six months before calling BG?  

I'd say it was a certainty that if you have the meter replaced it is going to be set to the current rates as it was always a loop-hole that you were exploiting there is no right to keep your old rates unfortunately.

The risk in waiting is that you will not know when it is going to run out of credit and without a working display you will potentially be stuck without power waiting for an engineer.

If you have a good idea of roughly how long that credit should last you may not want to rush to report the problem, but I wouldn't cut it too close.

juliapal

I am so grateful for your replies.
I have been very careful over the years and always spend no more than £9 a week. So I know this money will last me ages.
I know there was no guarantee with the prepaid trick but BG was likely to work according to The Guru. It's a shame as obviously most people with prepaid are on low income as it is.

MWT

One more reason not to push it too far before getting it fixed is that there is a chance it has simply gone into a 'free vend' mode and isn't actually tracking your use at all, so don't plan to wait until it cuts you off as that may never happen and would get expensive when they eventually notice...

Astria

I would contact them as soon as possible to get an engineer out to try and fix the display as you don't currently know how much credit is on the meter and you don't want to be left with no power and no ability to top up. You might have the full balance available, but you might also have a cheque on it's way to you as a partial refund of some of your balance.