Utilities and the joy of gas cards

We are now living in a house near the airport which is closer to the children's schools and the houses of their friends. The house is supplied with electricity, gas for the heating, gas for the cooker and telephone. You might think that the companies providing these services would you to set-up a direct debit and would then take the money from your account as quickly as possible - we thought that; we were wrong. Each service gives you a card, to pay for a service, you have to go to the bank (not just any bank, the right one, regardless of how close it is to your house), you pay for units of credit to go on your card and then you take the card back home and insert it into one of several sorts of meter which are often located outside your house in a building down the street. This would be OK if you could put a lot of credit on each card, but you can't; you also can only pay certain bills on certain days of the month. Each company gets a person to ring you and tell you when you need to pay but the whole process is cumbersome and it often means that you run out of heating in the evening when the banks are shut and the temperature is -9. Gas cards are boring to look at so we included a picture of the boiler, just in case any of you are plumbers and understand how to work it - no-one here has a clue!