Prepayment Gas Meter Losing Money

[wifler]

Hi folks,

I have a prepayment gas meter with British Gas in my new house and I've noticed the money seems to decrease a lot, so I turned the boiler off so no heating or anything came on and left it for a week (I'm not living in the property yet, I'm doing it up) and I went back in and it used 86p in the week without anything been on.

I have noticed that the times when it has completely run out of money and is on £0.00, when I put some more money on it with the card, it seems to take off 20, 30 or 40 odd pence of as "debt". I don't know why because I don't even use the emergency credit.

I will try and contact British Gas at the beginning of next week, if I can ever get through and see what they say.

I was just wondering if anyone has had a similar problem with a prepayment meter? Are BG charging me someones debt? It should have been all reset as a new account when I set it up.

[Clare_L]

You pay a standing charge on prepayment meters, so most likely that that is being deducted.

[wifler]

Ok, how often does that get deducted becasue the amoutn that comes off varies each day. Sometimes it's just 2 or 3p a day and then it'll be 20 odd p another.

[davethorp]

It comes off daily. Can't explain why different values come off at different times though

[ozzywizard]

Sounds like your gas meter is running correct, it is weird how they work but they do take a standing charge everyday at 2.00am and debt is collected on a wednesday at 2.00am. It will only collect this if there are enough funds in the meter and not in the emergency. Now regarding differant amounts, this is due to when in the week you top up remembering the week runs from Wednesday to Wednesday it also depends on how much you top up as it will always give you 30% for gas and use the remaining 70% to share between your debts (standing charge owed, debt set on meter and emergency credit owed) Because of the way these meters collect it can appear they are over collecting but in fact they are just taking what is due to them but at the same time always giving you some gas.