How do I get SSE to sort this out for me?

After the tenants

Sorting out the gas and electric

As the tenants were in debt with the utilities they were put on a meter to recover costs at £6.00 per week. I didn’t ask for this, nor was I notified, but to change it back and to be able to get the electric and gas back on I had to prove I owned the house by providing a copy of the deeds. I had to get my mum and dad to drive from Monmouth to Malvern with a copy and then spend £20.00 on the mobile phone and walk round the shop twice, once to clear their debt then the second time to load credit onto the account. By the time I’d completed this task and begged the local shop to let me pay by card as I’d withdrawn my cash allowance for the day to pay the locksmith, was 4 hours later.

To put the gas and electric back onto the meter I have to pay £52.00 and have a credit check run on me. Erm bit difficult that as I haven’t lived in the UK for nearly 3 years and I don’t see why I should have to pay for something I didn’t request to MY property. So when my new tenants move in and wish to have constant power supplied to the house without topping up I’ll have to refund the costs to them, which TBH, just isn’t fair.

In the meantime I’m back in South Africa and we are trying to rent the property out. As you know it’s rather cold in the UK right now and the rental agents need to put the boiler on frost setting and the last viewing was done by torch light.

I need to put the electric and gas back on a meter. It’s ridiculous the efforts I’ve gone to, to sort this out. I’ve just tried calling them and after a few minutes I realised it’ll cost me much more than the £20 that I spent sorting it out the first time.


 

*As of todays date December 4th, I can now confirm that the Electric and Gas have been transferred from PAYG back to a meter, in time for our new tenants who move into the property in 2 days.
Thank you SSE for responding to my blog and tweets when the usual channels failed to respond.