Day Light Robbery on my gas meter?? (help please)

simon8298

Hi

I am currently on a Quantum gas meter and have no gas and i am bloody freezing!!

About a week ago i went in to to £5 emergency which finally run out a few days ago, and for a few days i have had no gas at all, which admittedly not very nice (but i survived and i am still here!!)

Anyhow, tonight i got some money to put in my gas meter so i went to the shop and purchased £10 worth of gas.

When i got home and put my card in the meter and I was not at all surprised to see that after the meter had taken £5 to pay back my emergency usage and some towards debt that it would only leave me with just £2 of emergency credit.

Now that i can totally understand because it is what i have to pay towards debt. so fair enough.

BUT..... What i can not understand is this:

I put the heating on a very low heat at 11pm and by 2am When i went to the kitchen to turn the gas off, (just to save credit for tomorrow) the combi boiler was flashing (indicating i had no gas) i checked the gas meter and it was at £0.00 balance so it has taken the remaining balance

How can it leave me with £2 Emergency, then take away the emergency??!!! I am so angry

I was also just reading my meter manual which states:

"HOWEVER, SOME OF THE CREDIT YOU HAVE BOUGHT WILL ALLWAYS BE LEFT FOR GAS"

How can it do this... is this right???

iwanttosave_2

With my gas meter, you have to have £3 credit to be able to have emergency credit.

onlymee_2

if you credited £10, the only debt should be the £5 emergency credit which should have left you with £5 credit and emergency credit reset and available again.

from my experience, you need to credit at least £6 if the emergency credit is used up, otherwise the emergency credit isn't reset and you are left with only £1.50 credit and no emergency available. the quantum system is not good for the cold winter nights, especially when there are only a couple of retailers that stay open late to buy credit from.

e-on have a new prepay system which will never leave you without energy supply between the hours of 8pm and 8am even if you have used up the emergency credit.

my meter is using approx £0.50 for every hour I use the central heating (very low thermostat setting too). I have a bath every week and that costs approx £0.60 for each bath.

I can't afford to use the central heating, if I was to use it then I would have to pay almost £17.50 per week just to have central heating on 5 hours a day. having to use electric floor heaters instead, cheaper but not as effective as radiators.

simon8298

fantastic!!! i just put on another £10 and it has swallowed it up now only left with £2 after topping up £20!!!

djdeckstar

on the meters you also got a standing charge on top of what gas you use but when you use emergency credit they cant take this charge off so when you put credit on they then take these charges also if you have a outstanding debt depending on what day they take this on if you are using emergency credit. it cant take debt then take so much till you have caught up

djdeckstar

also you get charged for using the emergency credit

simon8298

charged for emergency credit??? nah
surely not

SwanJon

djdeckstar wrote: »

also you get charged for using the emergency credit

I don't know of any supplier that charges you for using the emergency credit, or charges it at a higher price, but you are right in saying that it doesn't recover a debt while you are in it, so it will need you to put more in than you borrowed.
As far as I know, if you keep on top of your payments, the gas meter will only take for the debt when you insert the credit, not at other times.
If you borrow £5 of emergency credit, you would need to buy about £8 to pay it back.

electricity meters will only recover from your credit and won't turn on again until you have paid all of it back.

djdeckstar

i,m with e on and got one of the crap meters i used my emergency credit and when i put ten pund on to get me back on cred it took the 5 pound emergency and about a pound for for debt but i dont have no debt the meter was already there so phoned e on and they said that was the charge for using emergency cred also the gas dont last as long on emergency ccred

SwanJon

If the meter is programmed with a standing charge, it won't have taken this when you were using the emergency credit, so will take it when you next put money on, so £5 for the EC + a bit (£1) for the SC.
If this is the case, the money will last longer on EC as you are not paying the SC.
I'd be very suprised if you were actually being charged for using the EC - there's probably some level of regulation against it.
To be sure, take a reading when you start the £5 EC and when it runs out, then do the same for £5 of normal credit - you'll find it is pretty much the same.

onlymee_2

swanjon, do british gas apply a standing charge for prepay customers ???
are these prepay meters designed to charge you more for gas usage during the winter ??

my meter still deducts £0.34 even when the emergency credit is used. I've noticed that the meter uses more credit in the winter months even though I use the same amount of gas throughout the year.