When I first moved to this flat three or so years ago there was a card meter and I asked my electric company of twenty years, British Gas, to alter it to a 'normal' direct debit one.
When their engineer came, he said that he couldn't because this meter and the other three flats' meters were all interconnected (back in the 60s) in such a way that to replace it correctly (& legally) meant ripping the whole wiring system up, which, he insisted, would entail a massive job because the whole apartment block and most of the road would have to be ripped up too.
he instead tampered with my card meter a bit (not sure how legal that was) and said it was now direct debit.
Since then I've received electricity no problem, but every bill has registered zero usage.
Into the bargain, British Gas never sent someone to read the meter, despite my asking them to.
After, say, 12 months, I was contacted by "Face2Face" (British Gas enforcers) who said they'd been trying to get access to the meter cupboard but insisted that I kept missing their appointments - totally not true.
I actually sent them the key to the meter cupboard (situated outside the flats) and told them to access it whenever they wanted without needing me. Did that happen? No
. During the last two years I received nothing but regular "We will get a warrant if you don't let us have access" letters, to which I always replied "YOU HAVE THE KEY", and then they'd apologise, but then a couple of months later I'd get another "We will get a warrant if you don't let us in" letter, and everything would be repeated.
Moving forward to about two months ago, some Face2Face bully boys came around out of the blue saying they had a warrant.
I pointed out that "YOU HAVE THE KEY", which resulted in their company giving me £150 as an apology after I complained, and also because management then admitted they had lost the key.
The management then asked if I would grant their engineer access to the meter cupboard to change the meter today, which I of course agreed to.
When their engineer and site foreman arrived, I discovered that they wanted to change the meter to another pre-payment meter, which I told them I preferred not to have thank you very much (and for reasons not worth going into, we luckily couldn't get into the meter cupboard anyway).
The result of this was that they said that they'd come back in month, and that I should try to ask their management to ask British Gas if I can have a normal meter.
The problem is, they said that they doubted British Gas will agree to that because there will be a large backlog of money owed on this meter. But I haven't caused that, they did.
I'm also worried that they'll want any money owed at a rate of return that exceeds my meagre incomings. Any thoughts?
Additionally, remembering that the last engineer who tried to change the meter said that doing so would mean a massive "knock down the building and tear up the road to do it properly" job,
I'm assuming that the only way they can change the meter this time (without knocking the building down) is to, again, do a makeshift 'dodgy' job. But I suspect that this time they will set it up heavily in their favour!
