Meter broken for over two years

Littlegoomba

About two years ago my lights flickered, there was a brief powercut, then the lights came on. The prepayment meter has had a blank reading ever since. 

I've informed Scottish Power about this several times and they say they don't know when it can be fixed.

The Scottish Power online account says I owe £38 since 2020 which can't be right as I am here all the time. 

Someone who happens to work for Scottish Power told me you don't need to pay if your meter has been put of action for two years or more. Has anyone heard anything like this? 

pochase

Welcome to the forum.

As you have an online account I assume that it is a smart meter?

Do you still have to pay for the energy you are using and only the display is not working? If so why do you think you would energy in future for free? 

If you are not paying and get energy for free, this will continue until the meter is repaired/replaced.

Both scenarios are unrelated to 2 years of broken meter.

[Deleted User]

Sounds like one of those “rules from the pub”.

Like “if the school bus is 15 minutes late then we are allowed the day off”.

Littlegoomba

pochase said:

Welcome to the forum.

As you have an online account I assume that it is a smart meter?

Do you still have to pay for the energy you are using and only the display is not working? If so why do you think you would energy in future for free? 

If you are not paying and get energy for free, this will continue until the meter is repaired/replaced.

Both scenarios are unrelated to 2 years of broken meter.

Hi! Thank you for your reply I have not paid any money to Scottish power in the past two years. It's not a smart meter it's an old looking prepayment one fixed to the wall.

they said I could top it up but all that would do is reduce the bill that they will give me when the meter is finally repaired so maybe I should look into this 2 years idea but it doesn't sound pretty hot round here.

Aside from that basically at the moment I have no idea how much I owe them and according to them they don't know either because they can't take a reading because it's broken doesn't that sound like a bit of a ludicrous situation 😂🤔🤔👍

Littlegoomba

[Deleted User] said:

Sounds like one of those “rules from the pub”.

Like “if the school bus is 15 minutes late then we are allowed the day off”.

She works there though. On the phones. Maybe she's mistaken 🤔 

ariarnia

when they repair it they will (eventually) estemate what you used and owe. you can try arguing about back billing rules (which puts a 12 month cap on bills) but i dont know how they would apply here. i can't see it being completely free any way becayse even with back billing they can charge you for the last 12 months estemated. 

Alnat1

Just make sure that you are putting a decent amount away in a savings account each month so you can pay when they finally get the meter sorted.

[Deleted User]

Littlegoomba said:

[Deleted User] said:

Sounds like one of those “rules from the pub”.

Like “if the school bus is 15 minutes late then we are allowed the day off”.

She works there though. On the phones. Maybe she's mistaken 🤔 

People who work "on the phones" are normally not aware of anything to do with complex and unusual circumstances, to which anyone who has called in with problems is likely to attest.  They're also not immune to watercooler rumours.

ariarnia

i think someone said in a differnt thread. if you could have free energy because your meter was broken then we'd see a lot more 'broken' meters than we do. 

SAC2334

These blank screen electric  meters are never repaired, they exchange them.
In your case you eventually will be getting a smart meter set to prepayment mode  .

They can t recover the readings and in a normal credit meter they bill fairly on past usage .
 he 
As for the question  that they will eventually present you with a bill, estimated of course , is a surprise to me .Please keep me informed if this is the case. Standing charges alone will be £500 . I expect it will be put on the new meter as a weekly debt.
Personally I think Scottish Power will scrub the usage as its partly their fault for being so slow in a simple meter excange  .
When I ve found these blank screen prepaymeters , and they re not uncommon , the last thing the occupiers normally do is phone up the supplier and tell them you don t have to feed the meter with your hard earned money .

Littlegoomba

Success! I said I'd get back if I saved any money. Well, I don't need to pay for any of the electricity I used in 2019, 2020, and 2021. Three years energy for free?

To sum it up: Ofgem say you can't be charged for electricity or gas you used over 12 months ago if you did not receive a bill for it. So it was a bit different to what I had been told but still it worked.

Let's just hope Scottish Power follow through with this. The correspondence they've had with me indicates so.