i just had some nob head telling me i have to have a smart pre payment meter fitted as required buy law, said no thanks.
well you have no choice hmmm puts phone down and rings edf.
been put on hold for 6 months and i dont have to have a pre payment one and i can have it det to dumb mode oh no
AFAIK nobody can force you to have a smart meter. Consult Citizen's Advice?
You should switch to Octopus via Ebico, they're easier to push around - I've got them to agree to cancel my direct debits and paying extra above what I'm actually using, so they can build up a surplus on my account to line their own pockets with, which I can
apply to get back at some later stage, if unused, and if they agree to pay me. Why do I need to build up a surplus for winter? It's winter! Octopus say they've cancelled the direct debits from my bank account, and claim they've enabled the barcode on my emailed statements, so I can pay monthly over the counter at a Paypoint using card or cash instead - why the hell isn't this enabled by default? Every previous energy provider has accepted cash or card payments. Whether or not they continue to demand that I pay towards building up an Octopus account surplus remains to be seen. I'll only pay for what I atually use
otherwise I'll consider switching to an energy provider which issues old fashioned quarterly bills, after I've used it.
It's all taken rather a lot of enraged sounding emails and emailed threats (I refuse to speak to them over the phone, because it's best to collect evidence), including threatening to complain to Ofgem and Ebico about Octopus, and threatening to complain to Ofgem about Ebico... and while jumping through hoops to get to this point, I discovered that the email address for complaints listed on the Octopus website for Ebico customers, doesn't even exist! Octopus really,
really want people paying too much every month by direct debit, and make things as hard as possible switching to paying by card or cash.
Imagine if your restaurant charged you extra before you ate anything, to build a surplus for what you might eat at some point in the future... then pocketing that extra money to earn interest in their bank account, or to invest in other businesses with you not being paid a penny for any return on those investments, or to make their business more attractive to investors by showing a higher cash flow than they would have otherwise. It's outrageous!
And what's with the minimum threshold before you can get any Octopus account surplus paid back? It's
my money!
It's the principle of the thing. I don't care if my Octopus account shows just 1p surplus - if I want my money back, I should be able to get my money back at any point! If I wanted another bank account, I'd open one!
I don't know what Octopus customer service is like when they aren't providing energy and customer service on Ebico's behalf, to charge my ebike with.