Prepay Scottish Gas meter being silly

[intersimi]

Hi all,

I am a Scottish Power customer. After paying deligently over the course of 4 years by DD and then being told I owed them £800 as I had been underpaying (they set my limit).

To clear the debt owed (we could not afford the one off payment), they installed key meters for both the electric and gas to clear the debt.

On the gas was £160, on the electric was the remainder.

We finished paying the gas off a few months back (as far as I remember), and so the meter says £0 owed for debt. Everytime I put money on the meter though, it takes off weird amounts, like 40p for debt, even though we owe the Gas meter nothing.

I phoned up Scottish Power to explain and to ask for a pay monthly meter. Scottish Power informed us, that we owed them over £200, and that when they removed the first meter in November 2004, they did not add what we owed onto (according to meter reading) the prepay meter. So us thinking we owed nothing, in fact owed over £200 and can not get a monthly plan meter until this is paid.

They informed me that they sent statements out, but I had just been filing them, as they were basic statements, and after all, the meter showed what I owed. They did not send me a letter stating that I owed £200 and had not paid anything towards this amount in over a year.

Now. I am sure the meter was taking money for debt up until the last few months, but they say that the initial money was cleared about a year ago. That on top of the meter taking odd amounts of "pence" makes me think the meter is at fault.

Any idea or suggestions?

[intersimi]

Is there a way of getting the meter to inform me how much I have paid into it?

[ozzywizard]

No, out of the 31 settings they never added this one on the quantumn meter like they did on the electric. Only way is to get a full statement of payments from the supplier.

[fbnts]

Do you use emergency credit? I used to have one, and if i used emergency credit and then it ran out I then toped-up I got charged between 10 & 50p for 'debt' which I presume they charge as an interest charge for being 'overdrawn'.

Tom

[ozzywizard]

Lol, its not an interest charge. It is a build up of standing charge that the meter does not take whilst in emergency. Now if you stay in emergency for months you can imagine the problems you get whne your meter is owed heaps of money.

[wildrob]

i use a company called EBICo ltd,(equi gas) (very good) on thee fqa, they say its because of transco and meters unable not to charge a standing charge, but i get it back on the price? so the price is cheaper because of a standing charge, i think lol

[ozzywizard]

That’s just a sales pitch to justify the standing charge by saying their PPU (price per unit) is cheaper. Lol. As for saying the meters are unable to not collect a standing charge, all they need to do is set the value to zero. But they are right in the sense of Transco charging for services which in turn is passed onto the customer with a little added for their admin etc etc etc