Pay as you go friendly credit and emergency

CivilGal

Hiya, I am currently renting and we have a power key to top up our credit. I normally do this once a week on Friday as none of the shops near me have the option to top up. 

If I’m being honest, I completely forgot until today. My partner is also away with the car. This morning, I put the emergency key on as I knew my credit was low already. I planned to go top it up later today. As I’m not with the car, I need to hop on a bus to another part of my town and go to the nearest random paper shop with a top up paypoint. When I went out, the shop wasn’t open. The only place that was open by this point was in the next town over and I’d have needed to get a cab to and from there. 

I shrugged and thought I would be fine until tomorrow with the emergency. I’ve had this happen once or twice before and sorted it in the morning. I also find the emergency runs out a lot faster than usual credit. However, when looking it up online I was informed about “friendly credit” that runs until 9am. I am wondering if the friendly credit was already active, would the emergency roll over? This isn’t anything urgent but I am working from home tomorrow and this will save me braving the buses at rush hour before I’m due to start if I can put i off until the evening. 

TheElectricCow

It's been a while since I've used a prepayment meter, but from what I can remember the emergency credit would be used up before the friendly credit takes effect, as it's only there to ensure you're not cut off in the middle of the night for example. I believe it's not actually a credit in the same way the emergency is (which acts in the same way as topping up the meter), but rather just a measure to prevent the supply being shut off in the hours that it applies to.

Slightly unrelated, but you might want to consider seeing if you can get a new smart meter installed from your energy supplier in future, as this would allow you to top up online anytime instead of having to find and visit a paypoint in person.

CivilGal

Makes sense. Thanks! Yeah, landlord (who is also a family friend) is meant to get one installed and just hasn’t got round to it! 

MattMattMattUK

CivilGal said:

Makes sense. Thanks! Yeah, landlord (who is also a family friend) is meant to get one installed and just hasn’t got round to it! 

It is not really down to the landlord, you as the bill payer and account holder should arrange it, just contact your energy provider and ask, it will likely not take more than a couple of months at most.

Scot_39

It maybe not down to landlord to arrange - but they should be informed of any planned material change.

AFAIK you can change suppliers without their permission - but meters and fundamental tariffs - thats another issue.

In fact meter fitters used to ask if owner or renter and seek explicit permission from owner before proceeding.

And according to CA - tennants can face reinstatement costs at end of tenancy - to revert meters - e.g. iirc still mentions prepay to credit or vice versa - which in past of course was often a physical meter swap - not just a smart upgrade.