Rise in energy firms remotely switching homes to prepay meters (BBC)

MWT

Chrysalis said:

Its interesting as when I had my bill dispute with octopus, that balance was left on my account for months without a single request for payment.

... if I recall correctly, the only criticism Octopus had from Ofgem recently was that they were not strict enough in chasing customers over debt...

Hard to see how the suppliers can 'win' on this one...

QrizB

Deleted_User said:

Possibly they're very jittery about the security around Octopus smart meters: This remote access is controversial to say the least!

It's not controversial, it's a fundamental part of the system.

DullGreyGuy

Does anyone actually know the warrant process? The only thing I could see online was that it costs £150 typically and its added to your bill...

If you live in a block of flats and the meter is in a communal area do they need your or the freeholder (or possibly leaseholder if you rent) permission? Is the warrant executed against you, the leaseholder or freeholder? Similarly if its an outside meter

Is it really a debate with the judge or a simple rubber stamping exercise with 99% of warrants being granted? Clearly the hassle of getting a warrant would stop some change overs, and even with a warrant getting inside a property to execute the changeover could still be problematic, but the press really arent making it sound like a well researched case as to any claim of increases purely because of this... with energy costs having increased significantly and general inflation is no wonder the overall numbers have increased even if they were all being done manually.

QrizB

DullGreyGuy said:

If you live in a block of flats and the meter is in a communal area do they need your or the freeholder (or possibly leaseholder if you rent) permission? Is the warrant executed against you, the leaseholder or freeholder? Similarly if its an outside meter

From reading reports on this forum, it seems they only need a warrant to enter your dwelling. They can change a meter in a communal cupboard or an outside cabinet without one.

Is it really a debate with the judge or a simple rubber stamping exercise with 99% of warrants being granted?

Again, from reports on the forum it's a rubber-stamp exercise (provided the energy co have got their docs straight).

Chrysalis

MWT said:

Chrysalis said:

Its interesting as when I had my bill dispute with octopus, that balance was left on my account for months without a single request for payment.

... if I recall correctly, the only criticism Octopus had from Ofgem recently was that they were not strict enough in chasing customers over debt...

Hard to see how the suppliers can 'win' on this one...

Its a lose lose.

What can you do when you supply an essential? the customer essentially is either choosing to not pay or legitimately cannot afford to, end of the day they are a business, so pre pay would be the outcome in that case, but it perhaps can come with some strong advice on how to reduce costs such as turning down the heating, turning off things when not in use etc.  I suppose the variable they have control over is the rate of repayment, they could allow it to be paid back at a trickle such as £5 a month or something, but when someone owes you say 1k, that would take them 16 years to get paid back.

In my case I was aware that I might end up losing the dispute, so I started paying £100 month manual payments on top of my DD to reduce my balance on my own initiative.  Then when Octopus gave me the rebate it left me with about £200 left which is now about £50, will be cleared this month.