URGENT HELP... Please Martin

pinna

I am writing to ask if you could advise us on the predicament we have found ourselves in with powergen.
We moved to powergen roughly 3 1/2 yrs ago from British gas and southern electricity. We put our gas on DD as it was on that already. We were told we couldn't put our electricity on DD as we were on a key meter for at least 3 months. Well time went on and we kinda sat back and never got round to doing it.
Then in November 2007 we rang powergen to ask for our electricity to be taken off the key meter onto monthly direct debit. Then came this shock.. We are told no can do as you owe £300 on the key meter!!
We said "what!! how can this be" we pay by meter so that we don't go into debt. The person couldn't find out the reason and said he would phone back.. Well he did and also told us the debt had gone up now and is rising every week. The reason he says is that when we charge the key up the message to the key has not got to it to put up the increase in electricity price. And that only 300 messages a day can be received by a key charger and obviously we had not taken our key at the correct time to receive a message so it was our fault for not charging the key when a message could get received. Since being with powered we have had 2 keys and the meter changed. Powergen never wrote to us about the debt and still we have heard no more on where we stand and we presume the debt is going up and up as we have had no correspondence with powergen about this or a new key with the new price increase on it. The last phone call we had was to tell us we owed over £320 and the government says they can reclaim this, even though this is powergens fault.
we are not allowed to go DD till the debt is cleared and can pay £10 a week.
Can you please help us out with this? Are they right? Its worrying us so much.
Please help

DGJsaver

blimey
sounds rough
id be interested in any advice the OP is given

good luck with it:beer:

Merlot

pinna wrote: »

I am writing to ask if you could advise us on the predicament we have found ourselves in with powergen.
We moved to powergen roughly 3 1/2 yrs ago from British gas and southern electricity. We put our gas on DD as it was on that already. We were told we couldn't put our electricity on DD as we were on a key meter for at least 3 months. Well time went on and we kinda sat back and never got round to doing it.
Then in November 2007 we rang powergen to ask for our electricity to be taken off the key meter onto monthly direct debit. Then came this shock.. We are told no can do as you owe £300 on the key meter!!
We said "what!! how can this be" we pay by meter so that we don't go into debt. The person couldn't find out the reason and said he would phone back.. Well he did and also told us the debt had gone up now and is rising every week. The reason he says is that when we charge the key up the message to the key has not got to it to put up the increase in electricity price. And that only 300 messages a day can be received by a key charger and obviously we had not taken our key at the correct time to receive a message so it was our fault for not charging the key when a message could get received. Since being with powered we have had 2 keys and the meter changed. Powergen never wrote to us about the debt and still we have heard no more on where we stand and we presume the debt is going up and up as we have had no correspondence with powergen about this or a new key with the new price increase on it. The last phone call we had was to tell us we owed over £320 and the government says they can reclaim this, even though this is powergens fault.
we are not allowed to go DD till the debt is cleared and can pay £10 a week.
Can you please help us out with this? Are they right? Its worrying us so much.
Please help

I doubt Martin would reply, hes one busy man, and doesn't usually comment on individual posting. I highly recommend you to contact Ofgem as a matter of urgency, they regulate the electricity and gas company, also get in contact with CAB, they will be able to advise.
http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Pages/OfgemHome.aspx


merlot.x.

Cardew

Pinna,
There are lots of posts on this forum about pre-payment customers building up debt, without being aware that this was happening. Your case is just a variation of this problem

Some Utility companies write this debt off(including the much maligned British Gas) others don't.

It is obviously a disgrace that this is allowed to happen, and questions have been asked in Parliment about this practice, but as things stand they can claim that money.

I would contact Energywatch and they might intervene and see if a reduction can be obtained.