Hello.
We moved in a week before Christmas to a property after a period of homelessness. We pay all the bills yet the landlord is insistent we stay on Utilita, in a ridiculously pricey pay as you go tariff, and that is stays in his name.
After moving in however I assumed his demands weren't lawful as I paid the bill and surely this cannot be enforced upon me, so I changed to a good tariff on EDF.
Unfortunately Utilita sent him a goodbye email and he went ballistic, let himself in to the property (we didn't know he had a key) and verbally abused my fiancée while I was out in front of our 7 month old daughter.
I came home as my partner called and threw him out, him screaming it's "his house and he won't have lying lowlifes in it" and promising he'd change it back.
A few days ago he did just that. We are now back on Utilita, in his name, and tonight have had an emergency due to the meters resetting to zero after the change. I called Utilita about this as I'm diabetic and need medicine, but obviously as I'm not the account holder they won't speak to me.
As a result I have lost money on my previous account, and have had to fork out tonight to keep me alive and my daughter warm to my landlord who keeps the cards, this was difficult as we had no top-up cards and had to navigate Utilitas awful guest top-up system to do so. For context the landlord insists on keeping the cards so they're not "stolen after the first episode". Whatever that means.
He has provided us laminated versions of the top-up barcodes, however our local store won't accept these as their machine fails to recognise them.
I'm looking for any advice on how to proceed here as he's threatened my partner with eviction if we change supplier again, which I know is bogus however it scares her after everything. As well as the fact we feel intimidated after this episode, and what he will do if we exercise our right to change supplier.
By - Loose_Student_6247
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