Prepayment Meter Electricity debt

[calamity jane]

Npower after generously reducing their prices for prepayment meters saving me about £2.00 -£3.00 a week, have decided to claw this back by increasing the amount being paid off our debt to £5.00 a week.:mad2:

Does anyone know what the maximum is they are allowed to deduct if you are on benefits/income support.


CJ

[Jester]

Re: Prepayment Meter Electricity debt

Dunno if there is a maximum to be honest. But I do know that if you ever decided you wanted rid of the prepayment meter then it would cost you a minimum of £50. This is what EON quoted me to have mine removed !!

[enaid]

Re: Prepayment Meter Electricity debt

Npower after generously reducing their prices for prepayment meters saving me about £2.00 -£3.00 a week, have decided to claw this back by increasing the amount being paid off our debt to £5.00 a week.:mad2:

Does anyone know what the maximum is they are allowed to deduct if you are on benefits/income support.


CJ

A prepayment meter will allow payments to be made to pay for both the supply used and an amount for the current arrears. You pay for the fuel with a token or key (electricity) or a smart card (gas), which you have to get charged at local stores or garages. If you don't recharge your token, key or card, you will run out of fuel.
Again your gas or electricity supplier must make sure that the arrears repayments are at a rate that you can afford and in line with your income.

Deductions From Your Benefits
If you are in receipt of benefits it is possible to have the payments for the gas or electricity to come out of your benefits directly in small weekly or monthly amounts. This is known as third party deductions.
You must currently be getting income-based Jobseeker's Allowance, Income Support, or Pension Credit. The amount deducted is fixed by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). This method of paying off your fuel arrears may be cheaper and more convenient for you than using a prepayment meter. It also means you can't run out of gas or electricity, which can happen if you use a prepayment meter.
Grants to Pay Off Arrears
Some gas and electricity companies have set up independent charitable trusts which can give grants to some of their customers to help them pay for gas and electricity arrears.
For more information, visit www.edfenergytrust.org.uk or get the Utility Trusts and Schemes booklet from www.britishgasenergytrust.org.uk .

So going off that CJ if you are no worse off then I think they can take the extra towards your arrears.

[Sapphire]

Re: Prepayment Meter Electricity debt

A few months ago I emailed Scottish Power about our dual fuel bill here. They offered us pre-payment meters, but we were concerned about the fitting etc. Here's the reply I got and it addressed repaying debt too, hope it helps shed light for you.

'In answer to your enquiry about the Prepayment meters, you would need to ensure that access to the meters were clear. Not only for us to be able to install the meter, but afterwards as you would need to be able to top these up regularly as well. Our engineers would do everything to ensure nothing was damaged though, but the access is something you would need to consider before going ahead with this.

It is a common myth that Prepayment is more expensive. It is Scottish Powers second cheapest payment method for your energy, behind Direct Debit. You receive a lower unit rate on this tariff. Where people think it is more expensive if due to the weekly repayment for any arrears but for consumption only, it is better than paying Cash quarterly.

As for the repayment amount itself, we have no way of setting this on a normal meter. When we work out any repayment for a credit meter the balance is figured into our calculations but we have no minimum amount to accept ie £14.08 or similar. The minimum amount of £3.25 is set by the Government. It is to ensure that we are collecting something back towards any arrears but doesn't leave our customers without anything to be able to top up for their usage and this can be altered through the meter at any time.'

[brandyjones]

Re: Prepayment Meter Electricity debt

Hi everyone,

Hope soemone can help me. Back in 2006 E-On got a warrant of execution to fit prepayment meters in my home due to arrears being approx £460. I was informed that this would pay for my usage of electricity as well as pay towards my arrears as above. approximately 18 months ago (may even be 2 years) i switched to British Gas (currently with Scottish Power). I have now received a bill from E.On advising that i owe approx £860!!!!

This furiated me and i telephoned them - they advised i could still get into arrears if using a pre-payment meter. I as them to explain this as i had been advised by having a meter i would pay towards my arrears and my usage. Can anyone enlighten me, does E.ON havegood prospects of making me pay this?

[enaid]

Re: Prepayment Meter Electricity debt

Hello brandyjones and welcome to Beagles.
They will probably tell you that they could not get access to the meter to update it for price increases, if this is the case then they can not make you pay.

[enaid]

Re: Prepayment Meter Electricity debt

Thousands face energy bill shock when pre-payment meters are finally updated | Mail Online

It looks like Eon may well demand the money, they will have to offer you an affordable repayment plan if they do.

[calamity jane]

Re: Prepayment Meter Electricity debt

Npower after generously reducing their prices for prepayment meters saving me about £2.00 -£3.00 a week, have decided to claw this back by increasing the amount being paid off our debt to £5.00 a week.:mad2:

Does anyone know what the maximum is they are allowed to deduct if you are on benefits/income support.


CJ

Update on current situation.

As quoted above we had, I thought, been paying Npower £5.00 a week to reduce our debt.

Just realised something not quite right. On May 6th they wrote to us stating that the debt was £567.00 and that payments to reduce this would be increased to £5.00 a week. In December we received a bill(actual reading taken on 18th December)stating that the debt was now £277.55. Yet when I checked the meter the debt is shown as £385.00.
Now approximately 36weeks(incl 4 weeks from 18/12 - 15/1) x £5 since payments increased = £180.00. £567.00 - £180.00 = £387.00.

So if my calculations are correct, we are paying more like £10.00 a week towards the debt.

Very crafty how they've done this because when I checked the meter, although will have to check again for exact figures, the rates on the bill do not match those on the meter.


CJ

[borgbaiter]

Re: Prepayment Meter Electricity debt

hi

i had lots of problems with a prepayment meter (british gas) over about 10 years there was an initial debt of around £2000-00 (estimated bills for the previous 5 years). after much analysis of bills and figures on the meter and monitoring it daily for months it turned out if you didnt top it up in a week it would completely mess up the repayment element of the money you paid in. so after £10-00 per week overpayment (we thought and had agreed) for around 5 years we still owed british gas over £800-00. after months of arguing with them they wrote this off and put back a normal meter at their cost. they also it seemed didnt change the price, or read meter in all the time it was fitted.


if it seems wrong the chances are it is! they seemed to have no idea how their meter worked and eventually ran out of excuses.


Borgbaiter

ps we left british gas soon after and we now pay around £400-00 a year less than we were.

[WendyB]

Re: Prepayment Meter Electricity debt

CJ have you spoken to Npower about this discrepancy?. I suppose that if you are actually paying £10 pre week then at least it will be paid off quicker, and if you have been, and hadn't realised, then it must have been absorbed into your outgoingseasier than you were expecting it to, if you see what I mean.

[calamity jane]

Re: Prepayment Meter Electricity debt

CJ have you spoken to Npower about this discrepancy?. I suppose that if you are actually paying £10 pre week then at least it will be paid off quicker, and if you have been, and hadn't realised, then it must have been absorbed into your outgoingseasier than you were expecting it to, if you see what I mean.

Haven't spoken to them yet as only noticed yesterday when I found the bill

It is right that this means the debt is reducing faster than anticipated, in fact as soon as it goes below £200, we will be looking for a cheaper supplier.

However, what with paying BT an extra £38 a month and Mortgage Co. an extra £20 a month we are struggling at the moment to pay our bills and we could have done with the extra £20-£25 a month.

Not sure what to do at the moment more bad news in post today so will have to rethink next step.






CJ

[borgbaiter]

Re: Prepayment Meter Electricity debt

hi

id recommend contacting them sooner rather than latter. nothing will happen quickly. at this stage just ask how it works and wait for an explanation. if necessary say you dont understand and ask for it in writing.



Borgbaiter

[calamity jane]

Re: Prepayment Meter Electricity debt

Time for update.

Latest bill from NPower shows a credit of £11.30 :whoo:

However, according to the Meter we are still owe £84.25 :ohwell:.

So time to write to them and ask for an explanation for the difference.


CJ

[calamity jane]

Re: Prepayment Meter Electricity debt

Debt on Meter finally down to just under £5.00. This time next week will be paid off .

However, 6 monthly bill received on 15th March stated that we were already £11.30 in credit. So can't wait to see what happens when I put some credit on next weekend. Will we have a minus debt or will we suddenly have a credit of nearly £100.00 appear?

NPower website states that prepayment meters are updated automatically the first time you buy credit after a change in prices. Ours doesn't appear to have been changed since as far back as 2008 and they're still higher than current charges.



CJ

[calamity jane]

Re: Prepayment Meter Electricity debt

Finally received our latest bill which shows a credit of £89.31.

Time to write a letter requesting a refund.




CJ