MSE News: Smart prepay energy user? We're urging firms to let you use £400 payments on gas AND elec

MSE_Petar

MoneySavingExpert.com is calling on energy firms to make it possible for prepay customers with smart meters to use their £400 energy support payments on both electricity AND gas, as it's the gas meter that's crucial for many people's heating this winter. It is unfair – and potentially unsafe – not to let smart prepay users decide how to use the payment. See our round-up of what each company allows below.

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'Smart prepay energy user? MSE is urging firms to let you use Government payments on gas AND electricity – here's what each firm is doing'

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[Deleted User]

Unsafe? Free money in a suboptimal way and it’s unsafe?

 Who makes this nonsense up?

MattMattMattUK

MSE_Petar said:

MoneySavingExpert.com is calling on energy firms to make it possible for prepay customers with smart meters to use their £400 energy support payments on both electricity AND gas, as it's the gas meter that's crucial for many people's heating this winter. It is unfair – and potentially unsafe – not to let smart prepay users decide how to use the payment. See our round-up of what each company allows below.

Read the full story:
'Smart prepay energy user? MSE is urging firms to let you use Government payments on gas AND electricity – here's what each firm is doing'

If you haven’t already, join the forum to reply.

Both are equally crucial, if your electricity is cut off then your boiler will not operate. 

Also I agree with Sparky, this cannot be regarded as "unsafe".

deano2099

There was some discussion earlier in the week about the impact of turning off the gas supply in planned power cuts, and it was said it couldn't be done as someone would have to go in and make every house safe before turning it back on and that wasn't feasible.
How do pre-pay meters work with gas then? Once you're out of credit and they switch off the supply, can they not be reactivated without a visit from an engineer? If that's not the case, is that what they're getting at with "unsafe" - the same concerns raised in those other threads?

QrizB

deano2099 said:

There was some discussion earlier in the week about the impact of turning off the gas supply in planned power cuts, and it was said it couldn't be done as someone would have to go in and make every house safe before turning it back on and that wasn't feasible.
How do pre-pay meters work with gas then? Once you're out of credit and they switch off the supply, can they not be reactivated without a visit from an engineer? If that's not the case, is that what they're getting at with "unsafe" - the same concerns raised in those other threads?

If you've got a prepay gas meter and it's cut off, it won't start up again without you being there to do something (insert a card with credit on it, for example). That means you take responsibility for making sure you've turned off the stove, re-light any pilot lights and so on.

If it happens remotely for the whole neighbourhood, there will be a certain number of people who won't have done this.

MWT

This is a relatively narrow problem, as it only affects customers with a smart pre-pay meter who typically use less than around 6kWh a day, which is already 25% below the 'typical' daily use.

Anyone using this amount or more a day can just shift the money they are not paying towards electricity onto their gas...