suddenly owe elec board a lot

browolf

i got a letter the other week. i owe powergen £350. they say i've been underpaying. for what must be quite a while given the amount. since they they can increase my direct debit to pay for excess. why couldnt they have increased the dd earlier when they noticed i was underpaying?

or could they have been underestimating the usage?

Edinburghlass_2

I had a similar letter this week from Scottish Power wanting to up my dd from £85 per month to £245 per month :eek:

Turns out I haven't had a proper meter reading for more than 18 months and they seem to think my 2 bed cottage is a six bed mansion.

Phone them up and get a proper meter reading done, mine was done yesterday then CS are phoning me back to sort out whatever the problem is.

browolf

good idea. i've been reading some other posts on here and it seems the elec companies seem to overestimate on the whole. infact it seems a prudent course to telephone a meter reading quite often, say once a month just to keep the overenthusiastic estimation algorithms in check.

gizzmo_2

I had a FINAL bill from Powergen today for a property that I moved out of 9 months ago. I rang them to complain - and they said that they had been upgrading their billing system last year at that time and there had been some problems - consequently some bills never got sent out.....I'm fuming!!!!!

browolf

a colleague has just pointed out that they might only review direct debit payments once a year and in all likelyhood i'm paying for extra electricity used in the last year when my ex didnt work and my ex-stepson didnt go to school. is this right?

for instance an 800w water distiller she got was used 4-6 hours a night for at least 6 months.

irnbru_2

browolf wrote:

a colleague has just pointed out that they might only review direct debit payments once a year and in all likelyhood i'm paying for extra electricity used in the last year when my ex didnt work and my ex-stepson didnt go to school. is this right?

Sounds likely since you're probably in debt to them. That is, they set your DD according to an estimated usage but your usage has changed in that periord. Thus you haven't paid for it and they're reclaiming it.

browolf

hmm the best i can probably hope for is that they'll continue to estimate my usage on my previous higher usage but i should be using somewhat less from now on so if i keep phoning up my readings, i may be overpaying it for a while but hopefully pay it off a bit quicker. thats my theory anyway.