Avoiding debt on your prepaid meter is one of the easiest ways to enjoy electricity to the fullest and have financial peace of mind. So, it is important to know how to avoid a debit on your prepaid meter to maximize all the features.
It is always frustrating to pay a debt on a meter without knowing the source of the debt. Hence, it has become necessary to do everything possible to avoid debt on your prepaid meter.
If you are able to avoid debt on your prepaid meter, you are definitely going to reduce your energy expenditure and save costs. So, it is important for you to know various means that you can use to avoid debt on your prepaid meter.
Interestingly, there are numerous ways to avoid debt on your prepaid, ranging from checking for outstanding electricity debt before moving into a new apartment, paying your bills regularly, to setting a realistic budget for your electricity bill payment. We shall be elaborating on these measures in the subsequent sections. Stay tuned!
Why You May Have a Debt on Your Prepaid Meter?
It is always strange when you notice an outstanding debt on your meter but don’t know where such a debt emanated from. When this happens, it means that you’ll be obliged to pay for the outstanding debt in your electricity meter account.
Hence, it becomes important for you to know the possible scenarios that may leave a debt on your prepaid meter even when it is newly installed. So, there are instances where you will have an outstanding bill on your prepaid meter. Without further ado, let’s see the reasons why you may have a debt on your meter.
1. Previous Debt Before Meter Installation
If you were owing an electricity bill before you installed a prepaid meter, the outstanding debt will be transferred to your prepaid meter account. Hence, you will be debited when you recharge a token to your meter, even if it is newly installed.
2. Newly Installed Prepaid Meter
If you can still remember, you would recall that when your new meter was installed, it came with some electricity units, and you were told that those units were free. However, in a real sense, those electricity units weren’t free, so you will definitely pay for them in your subsequent recharges.
As a sequel to that, if your meter is newly installed and you want to recharge but you’re seeing an outstanding debt, it means that you’ve been charged for the token that the meter came with.
3. Default with your Electricity Distribution Company
In some instances, if you tamper with your meter with the aim of bypassing payment, like illegal connections or meter bypass, and your electricity distribution company finds out, they will charge you a certain fee as penalty and the fee will be added to your prepaid meter account as an outstanding debt. To this end, if you had previously bypassed your meter and your meter started displaying sudden outstanding debt, then you should know that you’re paying a penalty for your default.
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How to Avoid Debt on Your Prepaid Meter
In the section above, we discussed some of the reasons why you may have a debt in your prepaid meter. I hope you grabbed the points. If so, let’s proceed with possible measures to avoid the debts.
1. Check for Outstanding Electricity Debt Before Moving into a New Apartment:
One of the easiest ways to avoid debt on your prepaid meter is to check for an electricity debt profile on a prepaid meter, especially when moving into a new apartment. Some houses have high electricity bills on their prepaid meters. So, if you move into such a house, you will inherit the debt automatically, hence paying for the electricity you didn’t consume.
Read this article on how to check outstanding debts on a prepaid meter to get more insight.
2. Pay your Electricity Bills
The most common way to avoid debt on your prepaid meter is to pay your electricity bill as soon as it’s due, especially when you’re using an estimated billing system to avoid debt transfer to your prepaid meter. Once you pay your bills regularly, there will be no need to worry about debt on your meter.
3. Avoid Meter Bypassing and Illegal Connections
Apart from the fact that meter bypassing and illegal connections lead to debt on your meter, they are also unlawful and disastrous, so avoid them by all means. So, if your electricity unit finishes and you don’t have money at hand, it is best to stay without light than to connect it illegally to avoid its consequences.
4. Adopt Energy-Efficient behaviour
By adopting energy-efficient habits like turning off lights and appliances when not in use and using energy-efficient appliances, you will be able to reduce energy consumption, thereby reducing costs, which will invariably help you avoid debt on your meter.
5. Set Realistic Energy Budgets
Another easy way to avoid accumulating debt on your meter is to set a realistic energy budget that will help you avoid overspending and accumulating debt on your prepaid meter.
To do this, you should analyse your previous energy consumption habits, allocate a portion of your budget to electricity expenses and adjust periodically to align with your lifestyle and seasons. Setting realistic budgets will definitely help you to ensure that you have enough credit to sustain your energy needs without running into debt.
How to Clear Debt on Electric Meter
To clear a debt on your prepaid meter, follow the simple steps below:
- Visit your electricity provider’s website and request ‘’Debt Clearance Form’’ or better yet, visit their office in person.
- Fill out the form with the relevant details, like meter serial number, meter number, all relevant reads, and the error message on the meter, among others.
- After completing the form, the debt clearance code (i.e., RTI code) will be sent directly to your email address.
- Now you can activate the code on blank key at any paypoint closest to you.
- At this point, you will need to put in the prepaid meter and clear all the debt and the emergency credit value will be restored as required. And that’s all.
Conclusion
There are a number of ways to avoid debt on your prepaid meter, such as checking outstanding electricity on a meter when moving to a new apartment, avoiding meter bypass and illegal connection, paying your bills as soon as they’re due, etc. Each of these methods works perfectly well for prepaid meter users. You can give them a try today and thank me later.
