Prepayment Meters & Key and Card Meters

About Prepayment Meters

The advantages of prepayment meters:

• A prepayment meter is a more manageable way of you paying your energy bills without having to worry about receiving unaffordable bills.
• Prepayment means you are paying for your energy before you use it, so you are more aware of your energy spend and can avoid accumulating any up debt.
• Prepayment meters allow you to see how much you are spending and your remaining balance. It gives you a better understanding of how much energy is costing you. It is also a great way of saving energy and money.
• Prepayment meters have an ‘Emergency Credit’ facility which provides a set amount of extra credit if you are to run out of your prepaid credit. This will give you the time to top-up your meter before you lose supply.
• Some types of prepayment meters will have a ‘Friendly Credit’ or ‘non-disconnect’ mode that operates at certain hours of the day and night. If you are to run out of credit at these inconvenient times, you will not lose your energy supply even if your Emergency Credit has not been activated or has run out.

The disadvantages of prepayment meters:

• A prepayment tariff is typically more expensive in comparison to direct debit tariffs.
• To ensure you have a constant energy supply with a prepayment meter you will need to purchase enough credit to cover your usage. It may be inconvenient if you need to top-up your meter frequently, meaning you will have to visit your local PayPoint regularly.
• If your prepayment meter has run out of credit and energy supply is off you may have to access the meter directly to restore it, this could be positioned out of reach.
• If you have run out of credit out of ‘Friendly Credit’ hours and used your ‘Emergency Credit’ or not activated it, you might lose supply. You could find that your supply is not restored until your meter had been topped-up and in positive credit.
• A prepayment meter is limited to accepting the unique top-up key or card (or top-up card number) that has been provided to you for your particular meter. Using other customers’ keys or cards, or your old cards could result in a meter fault. This means a payment might not be allocated correctly, or you may not pay the correct prices for your meter resulting in debt you may be unable to pay back.
• During the winter months, your energy consumption is bound to increase meaning your weekly top-ups will also increase. This could increase your daily or weekly budget; we recommend you spread out your payments over the year to build up credit during summer months that can be used during the winter.