Blank Pre-payment Meter? Do EDF Backcharge if they’re at fault for not fixing it?

RyanG94

Looking for some advice. 

Long story short, roughly 2 years ago we had repeated major power outages in our local area, my wife works in a hospital less than a mile away and even they were on backup generators etc as everything was cutting off every 20-30 mins for 5 minutes at a time.

When it was all fixed, our Prepayment Meter screen was totally blank. 

it’s worth pointing out we do not have a modern meter but an old style one on the wall.

we immediately informed EDF of this and they thanked us for letting us know, and the agent said they will contact us to arrange a modern meter be installed and in the meantime he doesn’t “think” we will be charged for leccy until it’s solved.

I work from home and have regular sales meetings so can’t risk the electricity going off, so although we couldn’t tell if it made a difference we did top up the key for a while, but couldn’t tell if it credited the box or not. We contacted EDF again and they said they were unable to tell if we had been topping up or not and again, they will try and send someone out to install a smart meter and that we currently have free electricity and advised us not to waste money topping up in the meantime as they can’t see money being put on the key or not when we put the key in the box.

we tried contacting them a few times since to arrange the installation, however they never got back to us at all. We finally managed to get an appointment scheduled for the end of September.

my question is, given EDF telling us not to continue topping the meter up as they are unable to see this being applied and stating we have free leccy til they fix it, and they have made zero attempts to do so. Can they backcharge us based on “estimated consumption”?

I’ve seen differing opinions online, some saying yes, some saying they can’t, and some saying yes but due to ofgem regs they can only backcharge estimated usage over the last 12 months providdd we hadn’t been receiving bills dating past that. We have never had any contact from EDF or received a bill at any stage so I’m wondering what the likely course of action is here?

thanks

imeach

Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands like this.
I haven't heard of anyone being charged, in fact there was one on here, who actually got paid.

Oh and your modern meter will still be on the wall, if they ever sort it

RyanG94

imeach said:

Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands like this.
I haven't heard of anyone being charged, in fact there was one on here, who actually got paid.

Oh and your modern meter will still be on the wall, if they ever sort it

Well fingers crossed then! Tbh I don’t particularly trust them to actually show up given how unbothered they appear about the entire thing.
we even had Morrisons Data Services come for a meter reading last year, seen it was blank I was ready to explain the reason why and he just said “thanks, see you later” and left. That was around 12-13 months ago, never heard anything from them since either about any irregularities. Nobody seems bothered except us when we tried to sort it out 😂

imeach

RyanG94 said:

imeach said:

Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands like this.
I haven't heard of anyone being charged, in fact there was one on here, who actually got paid.

Oh and your modern meter will still be on the wall, if they ever sort it

Well fingers crossed then! Tbh I don’t particularly trust them to actually show up given how unbothered they appear about the entire thing.
we even had Morrisons Data Services come for a meter reading last year, seen it was blank I was ready to explain the reason why and he just said “thanks, see you later” and left. That was around 12-13 months ago, never heard anything from them since either about any irregularities. Nobody seems bothered except us when we tried to sort it out 😂

The meter readers should have taken a picture of the blank screen and recorded it as blank, which would go back to the supplier.
Morrison Data Services wouldn't be able to do anything more.
Not that any suppliers ever seem to take any notice of that and still keep sending jobs out to be 'read'.