£400 rebate + Warm Home Discount + Prepayment Meter

Robbie64

I'm posting this to find out if anyone has any ideas how this scenario might work out.

In this instance I'm thinking of someone on, for example, Pension Credit (therefore in the Core Group) and who would therefore qualify for the Warm Home Discount of £140 and who is also on a prepayment meter. This is paid as a voucher which is used to top up a key for the electricity meter. With a £400 payment also being made over the winter months, at a rate of about £66 per month, again most likely by voucher, to top up a key for the electricity meter, how is this likely to work in practice?

In this instance I'm thinking of a close relative who gets the WHD, usually in November or December and then doesn't have to top up the meter again for a good 3 months. By the time the relative tops up again the fuel company have sent out an autogenerated letter as there has seemingly been no activity on the meter (i.e. there has been no top up). They usually ask for a meter reading.

With an additional £400 being paid, even allowing for the increased costs of electricity, there is the likelihood that my relative is going to run up such a masive credit that when the £400 scheme ends there isn't going to be any top up activity for months.

I wonder how the fuel companies will approach this? If the person hadn't been on a prepayment meter and was on duel fuel the 6 * £66 payments would have just been credited to the whole (gas and electricity) account (as would the £140 WHD) reducing the overall cost of fuel for this coming winter.

doesntnotcompute

The meter won't accept more than £255 (maybe it's £249.99 or £255.99 but call it £255), if you (I one someone) have say £200 on the meter and £100 on the key the meter won't accept it until there's "room". So when there's below £155 on the meter in this example then you can add the £100 on the key.

If you end up in a situation with £250 on the meter and £200 on the key (for instance) and you still have a WHD voucher or £66 voucher - well you'd be in a bit of a pickle.

The WHD vouchers have an expiry of 3 months, and it's predicted so will the £66 vouchers. Some of them you may be able to get reissued but the schemes all have an expiry date for the suppliers to reclaim the money from the government - I think the WHD might be around June ish (?), so getting a WHD reissued after March (?) probably wouldn't happen because the supplier might not be able to reclaim the funds.

I've heard from people who have added more than £255 to their key - I'm not sure what happens after that but it seems the money would be "stuck" on the key (see first para). If you have the receipts then you should be able to reclaim any unused credit or even "stuck" credit. The "official" version is that keys can't hold more than £255.

So let's imagine you have £200 on your key and you take your £66 voucher to the post office. The P.O. scan your barcode (BEEP!) and the transaction goes through, normally they count out £66 and then add it onto the key as normal (there's no special voucher credit info on the key it's just money). Now - it's your transaction - your money - in theory it should be put on the key and not paid out directly. BUT! what if the key won't accept the £66 - there's not enough "room" - what's gonna happen?? Who knows! The P.O. can't keep the money (it's not theirs anymore). Can they reverse the transaction? Might they just give you the cash? Is it possible to add hundreds and hundreds onto a key (maybe in some cases) and then claim it all back? I don't know.

You can go back and find threads from before April about this sort of thing, there's been a couple recently too, but it remains to be seen if any solutions are forthcoming.

re: The amount of time between top-ups - it's just a friendly check, I wouldn't worry about that part too much.

I hope that helped a bit, I tried anyway.