On December 7, 2022, while returning to her home in Wimbledon, south-west London, with her 90-year-old mother, Cecilia Klimcsek first believed in a burglary. The contents of a closet were spilled on the floor, and it was obvious that someone had entered the apartment during his absence for a few hours. After the initial panic, she found the letter of explanation left by Ovo Energy, her gas and electricity supplier. He had forcibly installed a prepaid gas meter.
Now, like 3.2 million British households, Mme Klimcsek was going to have to put credits on a card to insert into the meter to make it work. Each time the credits would run out, the gas supply would automatically stop. The same system exists for electricity and concerns 4.2 million households. “I was in a state of complete hysteria, remembers today Mme Klimcsek, 39 years old. I was only out for a few hours, Ovo Energy had my phone number, why didn’t they call me to let me know? »
A few months earlier, a bed bug infestation that her landlord refused to take care of had forced her to pay a company £1,200 (1,350 euros) for a full clean. For this mother of a 5-year-old daughter, who also supports her elderly mother, such a sum represented a heavy blow. She is unemployed, having resumed studies recently, and her husband is a cook.
Normally, their income is just enough to meet running costs (including £1,400 rent) and she was £372 behind with her energy supplier. “I had called them in October [2022] to warn them, and I had announced that I would pay on December 9 [2022]. » The company did not want to know anything and followed the usual procedure: faced with an unpaid debt, after a few reminders, it asked a magistrate for authorization to install a prepaid meter, obtaining the right to enter by force into accommodation if necessary.
This system is not new to the UK, but it became widespread in the winter of 2022-2023. Although the state has covered around half the cost of energy, the electricity and gas bill of the British has doubled from 1,200 pounds per year, on average, in October 2021, to 2,500 books today. Inevitably, chargebacks jumped, and prepaid meters were installed in 600,000 homes in 2022, a 57% increase from 2021.
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