The Pre-Pay Electricity - a Sign of the Times

kylith

I initially thought it looked like a good idea, but realised that if it was any cheaper than the other suppliers they'd say it in the ad, so I'm really not surprised to hear they're that expensive.

Kind of like the Sky ads; they keep going on about how great their broadband is, but you have to do a lot of digging to find out that the speeds are exactly the same as Eircom.

Latchy

The Queen of England wrote: »

It reminds me of those meter boxes landlords used to install in bedsits where you'd have to feed them with coins to keep the electricity going.

It's just a more high-tech version of the same poverty-trap shite that went on years ago when we wus all poor.

I knew a chap who discovered a novel way of slowing down or stopping the red dial on those ' high tariff ' meter boxes from rotating.

super_furry

Watt? This is a shocking turn of events. Next thing people will be pawing their joules to pay their electricity bills.

Ando's Saggy Bottom

super_furry wrote: »

Watt? This is a shocking turn of events. Next thing people will be pawing their joules to pay their electricity bills.

Ohm-y God. lol.

Cantona's Collars

Electric Ireland will fit these in peoples homes also,lots of houses in the Council estates around my town have them.Get a top up card & viola electricity.

recyclops

Just call up any supply company and ask for it, they are all chasing debt and will happily install them for free

Latchy

Some UK electricity supply company's can insert a meter in your home with a £10 emergency top up credit , no annual standard charge on the meter and you then have your pre pay card swiped at your local post off which instantly sends electricity to your meter .

..Brian..

Prepay meters are ok in theory if you're in debt with your suppliers or having difficulty keeping up with the bills etc but the fact of the matter is they are the most expensive way to buy electricity. It's always cheaper to have a credit meter (get a bill).

A good option becoming more available these days is an equal payment plan or fixed payment plan where a monthly amount is calculated based on annual comsumption and then devided by 12. It means you will have a direct debit for the same amount every month and it makes it a lot eaiser to budget. Beware of Bord Gais though as they used to add 20% to your consumption just in case. Airtricity add 5%. Not sure about Electric Ireland.

homerjay2005

the savings here is when you have no choice but to conserve electricity.

Bills are reactive measures, but pre pay is proactive and youve no choice...you either pay and cut down on costs, or you have no electricity!

in the long run, it will save money as people are more conscious of what they use when they can see the costs real time.

jester77

Wow, didn't realise how cheap electricity is in Ireland, yet I always hear people complaining that it is expensive. Cheapest here in Germany is around 26c per kWh.

Tiddlypeeps

Another good point for it is if you are the type of person to miss a bill then you get hit with missed payment charges. From the bank for missing a direct debit and possibly on the suppliers end too depending on who you are with.

If this happens to you often and you don't mind going a day or so without electricity then it could be cheaper to go with prepay.

seamus

The Queen of England wrote: »

I worked out that if I were to switch to them from Airtricity, it would cost me an extra €250 per year based on my current average electricity usage.

That's looking the wrong way at it, because...

homerjay2005 wrote: »

the savings here is when you have no choice but to conserve electricity.

Bills are reactive measures, but pre pay is proactive and youve no choice...you either pay and cut down on costs, or you have no electricity!

in the long run, it will save money as people are more conscious of what they use when they can see the costs real time.

Postpay/billing is basically a tab that you run up your debts on. When people have money difficulties, their first instinct is to kick the problem down the road, to a time when hopefully they will be able to service the debt. The consumer is effectively being given infinite (or indefinite) resources, which makes it very difficult to budget. Postpay accounts make money problems worse because they don't cap your usage. Electricity is the worst for this because the consumer doesn't even have to pay their bill fully in order to keep their service.

If that ability is taken away from someone and they're forced to budget their resources because they're finite, they will use them much more sparingly. So while on a direct, per-unit basis the electricity is more expensive, the effect of prepaying it causes the homeowner to reduce their overall usage and therefore save money.

It's win/win for the company because they make a higher margin on electricity and they don't have any kind of major arrears problem.

From what I understand, the old coin-operated electricity popular in cheap bedsits in the past was more to do with landlords being unwilling to let potentially deadbeat tenants take out electricity accounts and leave the landlord with a big bill to pay.

For the new water charges coming in, a prepay meter is actually the kind of thing that I would love to have because it would very quickly make me take stock of the water I'm using.
Prepay electricity is hassle because I don't ever really want the electricity to just cut out.

Pumpkinseeds

I hate that advert for the prepay meter. It disgusts me and the message that it sends is awful. You have a woman and child in a house and if they don't put credit on the meter they have no electricity until they can feed the meter. At least with a bill anyone who has difficulty paying the bill has a bit of time to pay it as opposed to being left with no power for however long.

As usual the utility companies are crucifying the poorest of the poor

Tiddlypeeps

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

As usual the utility companies are crucifying the poorest of the poor

Nobody is being crucified, using it is a choice.

Latchy

seamus wrote: »

Prepay electricity is hassle because I don't ever really want the electricity to just cut out.

Not forgetting that if your electricity does cut out your also charged extra for any emergency credit you may be using or have used to keep it ticking over , as well as any annual standard charge for meter to .

Pumpkinseeds

Tiddlypeeps wrote: »

Nobody is being crucified, using it is a choice.

People need electricity to power their homes, it is a basic neccessity not a luxury. People shouldn't be expected to go without light, heat or electricity to refrigerate their food. To force people to pay more for their electricity or do without it is a Dickensian approach to fuel poverty, you don't work for one of the main electricity suppliers by any chance do you?

looking_around

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Also be aware of one very important aspect of pre-pay

you have no electricity / water the instant the money runs out, there are no reminders or warnings before you get cut off. You can't negotiate with a meter

The local tech shop I'm working in sells this prepay electricity, or pin pay as they're calling it.

They won't cut you off on weekends, or between 6pm and 8am, so if/when you do get cut off, you do have a chance to go to your local shop and top up. Although they'll charge you for the time used.

I actually don't like this pin pay stuff.
I tell family and friends, if they want to avoid bills stick 20euro a week into their electricity account. Increase to 30 etc, if needed. No unexpected bills this way. And cheaper than this pinpay. There's also the spread out/yearly calculation to charge you the same each month, the next year that could either go up or down. Thats ok too. I prefer to just pay into my bordgais account weekly.

Although they are not crazy expensive. I certainly hate trying to encourage pinpay elec onto people while at work.

There are better/cheaper options.

Tiddlypeeps

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

People need electricity to power their homes, it is a basic neccessity not a luxury. People shouldn't be expected to go without light, heat or electricity to refrigerate their food. To force people to pay more for their electricity or do without it is a Dickensian approach to fuel poverty, you don't work for one of the main electricity suppliers by any chance do you?

What? I'm saying the choice they have is to get their electricity the normal way or use they can use prepay meters. Nobody is forcing them to pay more or do without. It's a free market they can choose the cheapest provider or they can choose a more expensive provide because they offer the service in a different way that is preferable to them.

And no I don't work for any electricity suppliers.

seamus

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

People need electricity to power their homes, it is a basic neccessity not a luxury. People shouldn't be expected to go without light, heat or electricity to refrigerate their food. To force people to pay more for their electricity or do without it is a Dickensian approach to fuel poverty, you don't work for one of the main electricity suppliers by any chance do you?

His point is that nobody is being forced to do anything. They can choose a prepay or postpay supplier, it's up to them.

Actually, the marketing in the ad is more than cynical. The implied portrayal is that of a single mother trying to provide for her child and struggling with electricity costs so her child can't have fun when they get cut off.
Moving to prepay means that you can now have a cup of tea while you snuggle your child on the couch and therefore your child loves you even more.

They know their target demographic and are pretty shameless about it.

Femme_Fatale

Think there's a certain amount of emergency credit, so if your top-up hits zero you won't get cut off immediately and the amount you went "over" by, will come off your next top-up.

Pre-pay is kinda a false economy because of the higher charges, but because it makes the customer more conscious about usage, it probably works out the same. As said though, I think you have to be in arrears to have one installed by some places. Bizarre seeing people saying wait until you are in arrears and then ask to have one installed - why not just make pre-payments that whole time?
With a bill, customers can still make pre-payments - there's no need to wait until the bill arrives. I put in a tenner a week, resulting in most of the bill being paid by the time I get it, and I still have another two weeks to pay it in full. There are also ways of watching your consumption without a pre-pay meter, e.g. an energy monitor.

Latchy

Femme_Fatale wrote: »

Think there's a certain amount of emergency credit, so if your top-up hits zero you won't get cut off immediately and the amount you went "over" by, will come off your next top-up.

.

If your electricity runs out while your out ,your tarrif is still ticking over so if you've used up your credit (say 10 euro ) you'll have to put back a minimum of €15 before the lights come back on .

deandean

Revolting idea in the current environment, watt are people thinking of, Disempowering themselves putting one of these meters in?

Grayson

Latchy wrote: »

If your electricity runs out while your out ,your tarrif is still ticking over so if you've used up your credit (say 10 euro ) you'll have to put back a minimum of €15 before the lights come back on .

It was a fiver on the one I had.

Surely if you pay upfront, the cost of the electricity supplied should be cheaper? Seems unfair than these consumers should be charged more.

Chain_reaction

Latchy wrote: »

Some UK electricity supply company's can insert a meter in your home with a £10 emergency top up credit , no annual standard charge on the meter and you then have your pre pay card swiped at your local post off which instantly sends electricity to your meter .

Pre pay meters are more the norm in the UK and NI, they don't cut off supply over there you see. Suppliers go to court, get a warrant and install a pre-paid meter in the property.

smileyj1987

deandean wrote: »

Revolting idea in the current environment, watt are people thinking of, Disempowering themselves putting one of these meters in?

Some people are struggling that bad they may need to resort to pre pay power .

The Queen of England

seamus wrote: »

That's looking the wrong way at it, because...Postpay/billing is basically a tab that you run up your debts on. When people have money difficulties, their first instinct is to kick the problem down the road, to a time when hopefully they will be able to service the debt. The consumer is effectively being given infinite (or indefinite) resources, which makes it very difficult to budget. Postpay accounts make money problems worse because they don't cap your usage. Electricity is the worst for this because the consumer doesn't even have to pay their bill fully in order to keep their service.

If that ability is taken away from someone and they're forced to budget their resources because they're finite, they will use them much more sparingly. So while on a direct, per-unit basis the electricity is more expensive, the effect of prepaying it causes the homeowner to reduce their overall usage and therefore save money.

It's win/win for the company because they make a higher margin on electricity and they don't have any kind of major arrears problem.

While all of this makes perfect sense, it seems such an odd way to make people more aware of the cost of their electricity ie., by charging them 10% more.

It's really not that difficult to budget for electricity bills - they're pretty much the same every on average every year & the bills can be viewed by customers online if they aren't in the habit of getting or keeping paper bills.

I would have thought that the easiest way of reducing an electricity bill if you were worried about the cost would be simply to use less of it. But there seems to be no accounting for how hopeless some people are with money & if they are that bad that they have to force themselves to overpay for a service in order to make themselves spend less, then that I suppose is not really for me to question.

Sulla Felix

The Queen of England wrote: »

It reminds me of those meter boxes landlords used to install in bedsits where you'd have to feed them with coins to keep the electricity going.

It's just a more high-tech version of the same poverty-trap shite that went on years ago when we wus all poor.

I have one in my house. We broke the lock off and just pay the bill normally to Airtricity but having it ticking away has made us a lot more aware of how much electricity some stuff uses. If we have a couple appliances going, a shower, lights and the rest on, you can literally watch the numbers tick down.

Please Kill Me

Got one of these installed a few weeks ago as Airtricity were dicking us around. We use €20 per week, so €80 per month. Airtricity were charging us €91 per month. So yeah, of course I'm saving money and I told Airtricity where to go too!!

Capt'n Midnight

Strawberry Milkshake wrote: »

Surely if you pay upfront, the cost of the electricity supplied should be cheaper?

Like I said before the cost of the meter and install have to come from somewhere.