In fair number of fictional books that take place in the UK there will be made reference to putting coins into an electric meter to allow the lights or a heater to run. Was this something that people would have in their homes or is it mostly in hotels or cheap apartments?
Cheap rented accomodation, students and the like, and completely obsolete. Students nowadays are major consumers, with numerous bills (mobile phones, internet, etc.) and so are easy to track down should they avoid payment. People with the most serious financial problems can end up with a pre-payment card system, which I suppose is the same principle as the coin meter, although you can put however much cash you have onto the card when you are able to.
My father takes great delight in the tales of screwing a particular landlady by rewiring the system so the meter ran backwards. Which involved rewiring the mains, so don’t try it at home, kids.
My mother has often regaled us with “in my day” stories of “putting the money into the heater” when she was flatting in London in the 1950s. I must say that we never quite believed her.
In America some old motels, hotels, or campgrounds still have stuff like that. Most don’t try to do basic conveniences like that anymore. The nice places would do it electronicly, while you stayed for not included with room additions.
Hospitals used to have coin operated radios.
Domestic prepayment meters are still around for both gas and electricity. They tend to be used by householders who are at the lower end of the social strata and who’s excuse is that this is the only way they can budget for their energy. The irony being is that this is the most expensive way of paying for both forms of fuel.
Those consumers who have the “ordinary” sort of meters and either pay when the bill arrives every three months, or (even cheaper) set up a regular monthly standing order, will get a much better deal . The rates per Kwh for both gas and electricity are lower if you pay that way.
Some campgrounds, particularly rustic ones far out in parks, still have things like this.
I’ve lived in a shared student house up north where there was a coin-operated electricity meter which only took old-style larger 50 pence pieces. I can’t remember where the old coins came from. This was about 10 years ago.
I don’t have any figures to hand, nor any particularly useful cites but i can certainly confirm that ‘pre-payment’ meters are not at all uncommon. They are as has already been stated largely used by those on low incomes. I’m not sure how many people opt in to this type of scheme but it’s certainly the only way the suppliers will agree to provide fuel to some people (e.g. if they have a history of not paying their bill).
From what a brief google search reveals coin operated meters are still in use but get replaced when they break down due to spare parts not being available anymore. Given how reliable these things probably are though, i’d guess there are still quite a lot of them about and yes, i suspect they were very common or at least not at all uncommon in the past.
As was stated above, the modern pre-payment meters use a smart card. These you take to somewhere like a convenience store where you charge your card up by inserting the card into a terminal and paying the store the money. Most of these cards also have an “emergency” facility which will give you a couple of pounds worth of power, when the card runs out. I think the stores get commission for providing this service.
I remember staying in a b&b in Swansea one night which had a coin-op tv in the room…
These are still around (or were). Again they are used by low income families who see it as a way of buying electrical appliances easily. The trouble with the scheme is that they end up paying something like £900 for a £300 TV set. I think you could buy other appliances such as washing machines the same way.
The reason I said they were around is that the major company that used to operate this scheme has just gone bust.
I worked on a catering team at a wedding reception at a local village hall - the gas meter in the kitchen was coin operated (we discovered this when the oven just stopped working).
I think they’re still quite common in rented holiday apartments and caravans etc. Certainly when I used to go on holiday with my parents (i.e. up to the mid-90s) and stay in such places you’d get bags of 50-pence pieces to feed the meter with. I can’t imagine they’ve disappeared since hen, although as others say, they have largely been replaced by card payment in domestic use.
As recently as six years ago my parents rented a TV set rather than owning it. Apparently the idea was that at the time they started the rental (about 1983), TV sets were considered unreliable, so the accepted wisdom was to rent rather than buy so that you wouldn’t be stuck for repair costs if it went wrong. Of course, they had the same set for ~20 years without a hitch, which probably cost about £1500 :eek:.
In the house I rented last year we had pre-pay gas and electricity meters, and if all four of us put in £5 a week this would be enough for a week’s gas and electricity (perhaps a bit more in cold weather as the house wasn’t double-glazed). This year I’m living in a different house of about the same size (but double-glazed) with billed gas and electricity. I’ve just been informed that my share of the gas and water bill for ~5 months is £107.40! Even after subtracting the water bill (I don’t know the figure but I gather water bills are considerably cheaper than gas or electricity), this seems considerably higher than what I was paying last year, or at least certainly not cheaper. I guess this is mainly because it’s split between 3 people rather than 4.
The sort of coin-in-the slot TV’s I was talking about is the sort where you actually buy the set and not rent it. I think they take the money out of the coin-box and put it towards the purchase. But as I said it’s a very poor deal with an APR in triple figures and the buyer paying way over the odds for the product.
Going back to rental TVs. This used to be very common, especially when colour TVs came out and they were very expensive and not very reliable. In that case it did make sense to rent , especially as the rental company would give you a replacement set if it broke down.
It was also very lucrative for the rental companies. David Robinson was the owner of one such company. He made so much money it enabled him to found a Cambridge college in his name, and also contribute a large bequest towards a new maternity hospital in Cambridge.
…Putting another quarter in the gas meter was not uncommon in Chicago in the 1930’s.
Don’t recall of having the same problem with electric meters though.
My parents still have a rented TV. Every two or three years, they phone up the company, suggest they’re thinking of cancelling the contract, and renegotiate the deal by asking for a new set for a similar monthly price. Twenty years ago it was a very basic 14" set, now it’s a decent-size widescreen one with DVD player. Next one should be HDTV.
Er, what?
Five months is 22 weeks, more or less. £107.40 divided by 22 is about exactly £5 a week, which is what you were paying before. Only now you get water with it, and you’re paying 1/3 of the cost instead of 1/4. How can this seem to be a considerably higher rate? Am I missing something?