Prepayment meters

Over the course of the last year, we’ve made many positive changes that should help our prepayment meter customers pay less and budget better.

Price alignment

We’ve aligned our pre-payment prices, so that at average consumption both our gas and electricity prepayment meter customers now pay the same as customers on our standard quarterly cash or cheque tariff.

Token meters and debts

From having more than 210,000 token meters in December 2006, we’ve now replaced around 150,000 of these with modern key meters which offer prepayment customers a better service. We carry out meter exchanges free of charge for all of our token meter customers and aim to complete this work by the end of 2009.

In 2008 we wrote off all customer debt above £70 in cases where this debt was associated with delayed recalibration of meters after price increases and we were responsible for this delay.

Super outlets

Prepayment meter customers can now replace their lost or broken keys at one of our new ‘super outlets’, instead of waiting for a home visit as before.

Quarterly statements

From research and focus groups, we found that our prepayment meter customers want to see how much energy they’re using on a regular basis. So in June 2008 we became the first supplier to send quarterly statements to all our prepayment meter customers.