Check Your Revised Monthly Payments!

brysiewysie

Eons newish DD system will refund any credit over £10 at the spring review when the account should be clear. Everything is calculated to produce a zero balance in the April, May or June bill. Accounts should be over 2 monthly payments in credit by now to cope with the fact that most customers use around 75% of their annual use in the winter period.

They also give 8% discount for dual fuel customers who pay by monthly DD.

It's not a perfect system but it does seem reasonably fair to me (I do work for Eon)

littletommytucker

I work for British Gas. The payment plan as you are all aware is calculated over 12 months. Lets say your direct debit started in March, and your normal annual consumption was £1200, so a DD was set at £100 monthly for you.

This would have all worked out fine, if the prices hadnt increase on July 30th by 42% for customers paying by Direct Debit.

Recently something we call "rapid reassements" has been switch on.. to ensure that everyones account balances at £0 when there 12 month payment scheme has run its course.

So its now November, and you have just five payments left on your 12 month payment plan year, these of course are the heaviest five months of the year.

Your Januray bill will be 63% larger than it was last year, and your March bill would be 42% larger... once you add these price increases onto your two heaviest bill, you will all see why it seems that your DD's have increase so much inspite of being in credit.

Come april when your 12 month payment plan starts again, the usual calculation of:

1 Years Consumption X Current Price of Gas / 12 Months

will be used to calculate your new payment amount, and would stay at that if prices, and your consumption stayed the same for a year.

The energy companys are NOT doing this to gain profit, as the ombudsman heavily regulate that the suppliers DO NOT gain interest on customers credit balance's, for the obvious reason that they could exploit this in the way everyone allready seems to think they are doing.

They are unfortunatly just passing on the effect of the price increase to the customers, that despite being heavily publicised, nobody has seemed to realise because there summer bills have still shown credit because barely any gas has been used.

Hope this helps clear things for everyone.

Of course remember that if you desperately do want your DD reducing, its worth noting that British Gas staff are alocated a 10% reduction limit to customers, and anyone reducing a direct debit by more than 10% comes up on a report to there managers. Now obviously there are a few occasions where an advisor would have to reduce a DD more than 10%, but anyone found to be doing it more than usual would be disciplined. So just remember if you really do want it reducing more than 10% then be EXTRA nice.. because its all down to there discretion. I make exception for 2 or 3 customers a day.. usually the ones that are just dead nice and chatty. NOT the ones that come on the call screaming, or equally the ones that try some sob story about there husband dieing of cancer slowly last winter, and now that he has passed on they wont be using as much gas as normal! Or the customers that tell me they have a mathmatics degree and can work out what they should be paying better than we can.

If you dont like it SET UP A STANDING ORDER! That way you will get a statement for any debit oweing at the end of each quarter.

Incisor

littletommytucker wrote: »

... Of course remember that if you desperately do want your DD reducing, its worth noting that British Gas staff are alocated a 10% reduction limit to customers, and anyone reducing a direct debit by more than 10% comes up on a report to there managers. Now obviously there are a few occasions where an advisor would have to reduce a DD more than 10%, but anyone found to be doing it more than usual would be disciplined. So just remember if you really do want it reducing more than 10% then be EXTRA nice.. because its all down to there discretion. I make exception for 2 or 3 customers a day.. usually the ones that are just dead nice and chatty. NOT the ones that come on the call screaming, or equally the ones that try some sob story about there husband dieing of cancer slowly last winter, and now that he has passed on they wont be using as much gas as normal! Or the customers that tell me they have a mathmatics degree and can work out what they should be paying better than we can.

That is disgraceful on the part of British Gas, to discipline staff purely on the basis of cutting DD's by more than 10%.

Plus, littletommytucker, I think with your approach of only cutting for people who are extra nice, YOU are the one who should be disciplined. It is of course a matter of mathematics or arithmetic which determines whether the DD has been set too high and it is the customers with their DD set too high who should have them cut, not those who curry favour with you.

Of course, [repeating the point] this type of problem could be sorted out objectively and fairly if these utilities published their methods of calculating payments.

Incisor

brysiewysie wrote: »

Eons newish DD system will refund any credit over £10 at the spring review when the account should be clear. Everything is calculated to produce a zero balance in the April, May or June bill. Accounts should be over 2 monthly payments in credit by now to cope with the fact that most customers use around 75% of their annual use in the winter period.

They also give 8% discount for dual fuel customers who pay by monthly DD.

It's not a perfect system but it does seem reasonably fair to me (I do work for Eon)

That actually proves that Eon are out to accumulate from DD. If they aim for each account to go into balance in spring [after the heaviest consumption], then even if the payments are right, the account will be in credit until going to balance the following spring.

If they did it fairly, then the account would go into balance in the winter, into debit in spring, but back into balance in summer and credit in autumn, ready to go back into balance the following winter.

[Of course, if they published their method of calculating the DD payment, there could be a fair debate about what would be the right way to do it.]