I have a prepaid meter, i think the supplier is EON. Does anyone know how i can check the charges for usage?

I have topped up over £80 this month,not sure if this is standard?

Also sometimes i forget to top up and i use the emergency of £5 and when i insert the key it says debit charge 4.00 sometimes says 2.00 what does this mean?

Hi - is this a KEY meter? I think there are a few different types. Anyway, if its a Key meter there is a menu. Insert the key first then press the button to the right of the digital display - it lists info each time you press it.

Credit, press again: Credit expired, Emergency credit remaining, Wkly charge, Total energy consumed, etc etc. There is a shortened txt of what its showing so you have to work out what it means!! (Ttl cdt = total credit) for example but havent been through all of mine yet. You should check it a lot as Ive heard they can change the rate themselves without you knowing and you might have an amount allocated to payback before you pay for any power! hope this helps.

Yes these are a con in my books. We have one in our home and seem to be putting money in it like theres no tomorrow. There is a standard charge to have one. Ours is around £1.50 a week so thats £6.00 a month already.

Its gets taken off when you either put credit in or use emergancy.

I.e £1.00 existing and you top up with £10.00. It shoud read £11.00 but might read £10.50 as its took 50p to pay towards the charge.

Same with emergancy is you have 50p on it and use emergancy you would expect it to be on £5.50 but you might see £5.24 or something.

What i dont understand is that it gives you £5.00 emergancy but when ours gets to last 50p of emergancy the elecricity goes off anyway. So its giving false information when you think theres money left to give you time to go shop.

Hi - wow thats interesting. Only fitted this meter last week. The guy was insistant that it would not cost us anymore at all save for the amount to pay back towards arrears - if what you say turns out to be true for this meter then I will be livid. Misrepresentation Act, Penalties.....!!!!! It's E-ON by the way.

Obviously it depends on tariff so you might not have a standard charge. However what i said about taking bits of money off. It works in exactly the same way. It should state going through the 'pressing button' what you owe and what you are paying each week. Once topped up you will see the odd 50p etc disappear and think you just put £10 in it but its only give you £9.50. That 50p has gone to pay towards your arrears. I keep saying im gettting rid of mine as they do cost more and want to change supplier. Ebico are the only one i can think of that charge the same whichever way you pay.

Just checked and can honestly say that based on 2000 units with my pre payment it costs £270.13 and with npower web 14 plan 2000 unit will cost £207. A big saving.

The prepay meter will cost the same as a normal credit meter. You have a standing charge, but the unit rate that you pay per unit is cheaper than the standard credit meter so they work out the same so the engineer is correct in what he is telling you. If you call E.on they will quote you the unit prices for you for both the prepay and standard meters so you can compare.

Hi and thank you for your replies. I will press some buttons and see what gives for my key meter. I'm so wary as I know I can't afford for it to be £80 or something like it a month - been going round turning things off right left and center!!

Another querie with these meters. I was on the emergancy yesterday and completely forgot. Come 8am there was still credits in the meter and all electricity was on. So we have £5.00 of emergancy credit. Once this goes the electricity goes off. Am i right?

So why do i get in from work at 12.30 pm to find no electricity yet the meter reading -7.28. The electricity should go off when it hit near £5.00.

Where have i used a further £2.28 in the space of 4.5 hours when no electricity is on as it should of been cut off.

And my standard charge according to supplier is £1.27 a week yet shows £1.30 on meter inc of VAT.

I dont like these one bit. Very irritating!!

Thanks for the replies i will check mine see how much is charging.

Im sure mine says more than £1.27pw?

£80 a month!

I wish.

We had a key metre installed by Southern Electric last Friday 12th December, who had assured us that it cost the same as the old quarterly metre.

This was against my wishes, but my gf was trying to do the right thing as we have some arrears and we didn't want to incur any more.

We have pumped £43 into this monster to date.

And we are being careful.

We are heading towards the £70 per week mark! Take off the £6 per week arrears and this still amounts to a quarterly electric bill of £800 in a 3 bed semi!

My partner has been calling them everyday and finally they agreed to send someone round earlier tonight. He told us that the key metre IS more costly, but would not comment on the ridiculous amount of Electric that is being used. He changed the metre for us and said that sometimes they are faulty, either taking too much or even nothing at all.

Anyway, guess what?

No difference!

The metre has used £2 in the three hours that have passed since he left.

The Customer Service people have generally been disinterested (except for one who got cut off) and try to fob us off with "take the readings and phone back" or "turn the appliances off one at a time".

Is it me?

Or is it virtually impossible to have a quarterly electric bill of £800 a quarter in a 3 bed semi?

How the hell do those people who have all the Christmas lights around their houses pay for them? If that was our house we would have to remortgage!

This really is taking over our lives at the moment, as we are worried sick about leaving any light on for a second longer than necessary and she will be stuck on the phone all day tomorrow again.

Help!

I know what you mean. When your arrears is cleared it will go down. We had the same problem and someone came out and said it was all ok. The fact that we had builders in and we were out, they just invited themselves in and read meter etc.

I complained saying they could of done anything and why as soon as the meter gets put in we are using double before. They are not interested!

Hopefully you will find yourself in credit as they do alter these to get the money back. They are only interested in getting their money and i find because you are using more, it is only encouraging debt elsewhere.

It is also a sneak way to tie you in as they need to be removed before you can switch suppliers.

I know we have a condenser dryer that uses alot. Tho even when i have turned things off execpt the fridge it has jumped alot.

Quicker i get rid the better!

I appreciate what you are saying Jonnyb.

But our meter is set to take £6 per week, leaving us with an estimated monthly bill of over £250 at the moment. This is at least 3 times what we would expect to be paying.

hi guys,

although i'm not an expert on prepayment meters i know on the standard eon prepayment tariff theres a 50p/day standing charge. we were paying 3.50 per just in standing charges, that works out to £14 a month before we start using electric and the prices per unit are the same! when they are in the press about the costs of prepayment meters u will see that eon say we dropped our prices to match standard meters. which they have however there is still that standing charge. we switched to ebico and are not topping up the electricity anywhere near as much as before as they have no standing charge. the gas has gone up a lot but hoping thats just due to winter. also if you run out of credit at night the meter will stay on until around 8 am then switch off. And will then add on what you would have used at night, so potentially if your £5 emergency credit ran out at say 11pm then anyting u use between 11 and 8 will be added at 8 so could poss e.g. show -£7. i hope this makes sense and hope it helps someone

hi guys,

 

although i'm not an expert on prepayment meters i know on the standard eon prepayment tariff theres a 50p/day standing charge. we were paying 3.50 per just in standing charges, that works out to £14 a month before we start using electric and the prices per unit are the same! when they are in the press about the costs of prepayment meters u will see that eon say we dropped our prices to match standard meters. which they have however there is still that standing charge. we switched to ebico and are not topping up the electricity anywhere near as much as before as they have no standing charge. the gas has gone up a lot but hoping thats just due to winter. also if you run out of credit at night the meter will stay on until around 8 am then switch off. And will then add on what you would have used at night, so potentially if your £5 emergency credit ran out at say 11pm then anyting u use between 11 and 8 will be added at 8 so could poss e.g. show -£7. i hope this makes sense and hope it helps someone

50p perday standing charge???? I would double check that as that doesnt sound right at all.

Hi - wow thats interesting. Only fitted this meter last week. The guy was insistant that it would not cost us anymore at all save for the amount to pay back towards arrears - if what you say turns out to be true for this meter then I will be livid. Misrepresentation Act, Penalties.....!!!!! It's E-ON by the way.

Yeah I got told the same thing that it wouldn't cost me any more than a normal meter! YEAH RIGHT!!

The meter was installed at 2:00pm on Friday with exactly £10.00 credit on it, but get this.... I went and checked it at 5:00pm just 3 hours later as it's the first time I've had a prepay meter, and I was F***ING GOB SMACKED to find £7.08!!! THAT’S NEARLY £1.00 AN HOUR!

I wasn't even home for an hour of that, the only stuff that was plugged in and switched on was a fridge, a freezer and 1 storage heater on a low setting! I called the helpline to ask what the hell was going on and the response was "yeah that's about right".

e.on suck!!!!

AVOID PREPAY METERS LIKE THE PLAGUE!e.on suck!!!!

This is exactly why I'm doing everything possible at the moment to avoid one.

Could the biggest problem be E.ON though and not the meters?

we get a different electricity slaesman knocking on the 2 door maybe once every month and they all offer lower rates than E.ON which we're with at the moment. The bills are stupidly high! But we can't switch yet because we owe so much:cry:

Ive been monitoring mine and over the last 20 days we have put £65 in it. Nobody is home most of the day and this is stupid.

We are being charged £1.27 charge yet just an hour ago the emergancy was down to 95p and i topped it up with £10.00. By right this should then go back up to having £5.95 in it, give or take a few pence as they do deduct some of the charge. It went up to £2.17 so only £7.12 has been added. Where has the other £2.88 gone, not on charges as we are putting at least £10 in every 4 or 5 days so charges should have already come off. This is over 2 weeks charges and in those 2 weeks money has been put on it 4 times.

this is why i changed over to a normal meter

was pre-payment when moved in, for ever putting money on gas, times £40 week! its greed and dont owe them anything, had them out to check why so much, same response, "you must be using it as we are never wrong"

Hi - re the pre-pay meter, as we are apparently paying £10 per week towards arrears before getting any electricity, if there is also a standing charge, which I was not aware of, then it looks like it will cost us £120+ per quarter and then the power on top - does that sound right? I've used my emergency £5 already but it doesnt seem to have gone back on with further top ups, unless there's a way to select that ??? I think I've put around £120 on over 5 weeks but only use the washing machine once a week now, never the dryer, and rarely the oven! sticking to the gas hob these days - wok and chips all round!

Hi I have a prepayment key meter with swalec (did have agas one too)

we live in a large 2 bed semi

3 downstairs rooms and a toilet and kitchen

2 large bedrooms and a large bath room

and a attic conversion as a office and spare room

we use about 15week (10 in sumer

)with swalec social tariff

and use £15 a week gas (this was on a card meter but everytime you banged it off it went) on social tariff

so wityh the gas i have a card and wife puts the 15quid on every week and when i get my bill it deducts what i have paid and what i owe(jan2009 bill owe them 40quid) with a new baby and another daughter in the house heatings on constant as i allways do in winter and just turn the thermastic rad valves down

I would highly recommend swalec as there are far better and if you on denifits or old just ring them up and say was told by energywatch that i could move onto your energy care plus tariff it works out like this

15.62 per unit

9.38 per unit (on energycare tariff)

they dont like you going on it cus the lose 6p a unit

i have been with them now for 14 yrs so has a lot of family and friends with no problem

Regards DK

PS if your on benefits or low wages or have a really high why not try there trust funds

Hi - re the pre-pay meter, as we are apparently paying £10 per week towards arrears before getting any electricity, if there is also a standing charge, which I was not aware of, then it looks like it will cost us £120+ per quarter and then the power on top - does that sound right? I've used my emergency £5 already but it doesnt seem to have gone back on with further top ups, unless there's a way to select that ??? I think I've put around £120 on over 5 weeks but only use the washing machine once a week now, never the dryer, and rarely the oven! sticking to the gas hob these days - wok and chips all round!

Once you top up you should go back to your normal credits and again have the £5.00 emergancy to use if your money runs out.

Yes your right you will be paying £120 a quarter just on your debt. This will come off any top ups you make.. ie. if you top up with £10.00 you might only get £9.00 as the £1.00 will come off your debt. If its a key meter press the button to scroll through and you can see exactly what you owe.

Regarding my last post the £2.17 i had has just this minute gone and now on emergancy again. So in less than 18 hours we have used £2.17. Nine of them hours we were in bed asleep and ive been at work from 05.45 until 12.00 this morning.

I highly advice to monitor these. What you put in and when. How much is coming off your debt. And also for the month work out how many units you use and you can compare to other companies.

Hope this helps.

hi, i have a prepaid meter and im not sure but i heard that the landlord can ajust the meter to pretty much how much he wants to charge?, my meter is eating my money to the point that i can no longer afford to use my heating. I showed my landlord how many cards i used and he look embarressed and sid why am i keeping them and should throw them away once they have been used, i have kept them, with the amount of cards i have i could use them to hold up a car while i change the tyre. im not joking, realy!, i think my landlord is making a tidy profit from me. Another one of his tennents had complained and she said he came around and done somthing to the meter and its normal now, she has a new born baby so i think he kind of did not want to cause any upset or draw any attention to what he is doing. im realy depressed by all this. i feel like a homless person im that cold.

Hi - hmmm this sounds dodgy to me. Who ever supplied the meter and therefore the 'power' is the only person who can legally adjust it - as far as I'm aware landlords do not qualify!! KEEP those cards. Dont say too much else to the landlord but ring your electricity company and try to speak to a manager level on this. Make a formal compaint against them directly if you have to and they will soon direct their attention to your landlord. If you cannot mange the cost of calls to your supplier with all their **** menus, pm with the info and I will ring them myself on Monday morning. Also, E-on have just lowered their prices so they should be passing the price adjustments on to your meter.

i dont think its an e-on meter?, im not sure, im more worried about causeing upset and loseing my flat to be honest. i feel quite trapped by the whole thing.

Hi there - how's it going? It sounds like you are in a corner with this thing. Can you have a look through the web - I'm pretty sure there's a site that you can type in your postcode and it will tell you who your supplier is for the area. Then you can ring them and say you are the tenant and you are unable to afford the rate they are charging - they will then look up your details and might say things that will enlighten you - e..g. oh, this is a managed account by the landlord and is held in his name and we therefore can't discuss it with you. So, then you'll know the 'set-up'. You then tell them that as your manager of the account seems to be altering it can you tell you if this is to allow for price adjustments that he/she has been notified about?? This will at least be a way of getting the ball rolling. No-one should be in a position where they are unable to access their human rights! that is written in stone - well LAW actually and I am worried that you feel you cannot challenge or even query what is, after all, something that you pay for. Sorry, am I nagging you:) chin up and think about it if you need to. what about trying CAB but ask them to keep you out of it.??