Prepayment Meter - Hypothetical Question

MikeyPGT

Just suppose a notoriously useless company - lets call it Scottish Power - credits my prepayment meter with an imaginary £200 (which both they and I accept is imaginary) and after 5 months of active complaining and weekly contact they have failed to rectify it, am I within my rights to not pay them anything until they sort it out?  I estimate that with the 'real' credit and the imaginary £200 I will not have to 'top up' the meter for about another 5 months.  I do accept that I will have to pay for the electricity at some stage but want to make a stand against them.

pochase

As you have complained about it before it is nor really hypothetical question, is it?

Are the £200 usable credit or just shown as credit, in other words if you stop topping up do you still have electrcity.

If you still have the electricity and can use up the £200, go for it, nobody can blame you for it and worst case is that they will ask you to pay it back, so you are not worse of than now.

If the meter switches off even so it shows on a register the £200, your question is moot, isn't it? It just shows somewhere, but you cannot use it.

MikeyPGT

Because of the Energy support scheme I've not had to break into the £200 which is shown on the meter, but not on the monthly statements SP  send me.  I have actually told them by email that I am not paying anything more until the meter reaches zero, but for some reason they have decided to cancel my last 2 requests for them to call me back.  It will be interesting to see if they bother to call me back this morning.

MattMattMattUK

Just checking, you call this £200 "Imaginary", what do you mean by that? Could you for example have been credited with the AFP which was £200?

pochase

My reaction would be to use the money, you made an effort repeatedly to get it sorted, and they have done nothing to sorted. 

It sounds like you can live with the emergency credit until you can top up again should the £200 not be really usable.

MikeyPGT

The £200 appeared on the meter back in July last year after an abortive attempt to top up at the local post office - I've been querying it ever since.  It shows on the Smart Mater itself, the IHD and Scottish Power's 'Award Winning App', but not on the statements that SP send me.  I have asked for the meter to be changed over to a non-prepay state but apparently that isn't possible with a SMETS1 meter (according to SP, but may or may not be).

EssexHebridean

Use it, but set the same amount aside in a ring-fenced savings account earning some interest. If you are asked to pay it back in the future it's there and waiting. If not, happy days! 

t0rt0ise

You are very patient. I'd have stopped worrying about it and used it last August.

SAC2334

in my meter reading days back in 2016 i found a prepay gas meter with over £15000 credit on it .

I reported it to Revenue Protection who told me it was a known fault on prepay E 6 gas meters ( some fault on a  prepay card ) and nothing could be done about it and no money was reclaimed on this occupier who had had free gas for years  and was not classed as fraud even though he never reported it .

Meter was changed .Tennant had left the property . 

MikeyPGT

t0rt0ise said:

You are very patient. I'd have stopped worrying about it and used it last August.

If it hadn't been for that pesky Government subsidy I would have done!  As it is I'm still in real credit despite not making any payment to Scottish Power since last August ...