Not accepting my monthly payment

rassman

Just off the phone with scot gas about my electricity bill, i owe about £379 and made a payment of £79 today.

i said i can pay the rest each month by DD, they want £140 each month and i said i can only pay £77 each month,

I was told that i will be dis-connected and legal proceedings against me for which i will be additionally charged for all of this, is this true?

I have said that i will pay £77 but they are refusing to accept this monthly amount.

What can I do next,

thanks

Cardew

When you agree to pay by DD, you get a discount and agree that the Utility company can set the level of the DD to cover the annual costs.

The only stipulation is that they must notify you in advance of any increase in DD

Obviously there is scope for negotiation on the level of the DD if you can argue that they have set it too high; but that argument does not include what you can afford to pay, or want to pay.

If that were the case many of us would demand to pay £1 a month, put the rest of the money in a savings account and settle at the end of the year.

At the end of the day you owe the company £379 and they are not prepared to accept your offer.

Your choices are to pay off in full what you owe(and move company), or agree their DD figure.

The normal action at this point is to force you to have pre-pay meters or get a court order against you/hand the case to a debt collection agency.

ex-energywatch_adviser

It also depends on how much you are using currently on a monthly basis e.g. if your current usage is say £60 per month, only paying £77 per month it would take nearly 2 years to clear the outstanding debt and suppliers wouldn't normally agree a repayment scheme of this length.

Magentasue

Depending on your usage, £140 might be very reasonable. How much does your normal electricity usage come to every month? Even better, do you know your annual use in KWH?