doubled payments on dual fuel

donnajunkie

hi,
i wonder if anyone has any ideas about what we can do about a problem with our dual fuel?
we are with npower and we use a payment card at paypoint fortnightly to pay our dual fuel.
over the past year the required payment each fortnight has been £14. today we got a letter saying from next week we have to pay £28 a fortnight.
we had only underpaid by £109 over the past year, so shouldnt they have just divided that into the number of payments over the coming year and just added that on?
our usage never changes. with the price rises we expected to be paying more this year but not double! we have a very low income so it is even harder to afford this increase.
another odd thing is they divided the estimated usage for the year between 22 payments but there are 26 fortnights in a year.

matto

You could try ringing them to negotiate but bear in mind prices have gone up by 50% over the past 9 months so you should probably be paying £21 anyway just to cover your usage.

Trix

My payments had gone up from £54 to £140 per month (now amended to £120 after I emailed them) see my thread HERE

Their charges have gone up 25% apparantly

They based my payments on paying them the balance as well as my usual usage costs over six months so assume the same has happened with you. Email / phone / write to them and ask if it can be spread over 12 months instead.

Woby_Tide

can't answer why the calculations are for 22 weeks but the rough reason why the payments have doubled

last year you paid £14 every fortnight = 14 x 26 = £364 paid
they say you now owe £109 due to under payment so last years bill was 364 +109 = £473
So if prices don't increase this year(but it's likely they already have a bit so this years payment is likely to be more than £473) you would pay £473 / 26 payments = £18 fortnight
But you also owe £109 for last year which is 109 / 26 = £4.20 approx

so new fortnightly payments are £18(for current use) + £4.20 (paying of last years debt) = £22ish

(not sure on the 22 weeks thing but that creates payments of £21.50 for current usage and £5 for debt so £26.50 in total) Only they can answer the number of fortnights bit

donnajunkie

thanks for all of your responses. i cant read through them properly now as i have to go soon. i forgot to mention they estimated this years usage to be £621 including the £109 owed from last year. unfortunately in the recent statement it only had details of the last 3 months. although it does seem like they have based it on the winter usage rather than the whole year like they said they do, i multiplied the amount for the 3 winter months by 4 and it came to the amount they estimated. we cant see for ourselves how much we used over the whole year because we dont keep all the statements.

computerwoman

:j swap companies now I was with npower for 6 months 5years ago and could'nt wait to get rid of them, you could try powergen which I'm with or british gas as they offer a winter fuel allowance to people on certain benefits, but having had a very bad experiance with npower I went with powergen and have never looked back, hope this help's with the prices going up and down I'd say go with who are nicest to work with, T

anniecave

donnajunkie wrote:

thanks for all of your responses. i cant read through them properly now as i have to go soon. i forgot to mention they estimated this years usage to be £621 including the £109 owed from last year. unfortunately in the recent statement it only had details of the last 3 months. although it does seem like they have based it on the winter usage rather than the whole year like they said they do, i multiplied the amount for the 3 winter months by 4 and it came to the amount they estimated. we cant see for ourselves how much we used over the whole year because we dont keep all the statements.

I'd always keep my statements - I work for a debt collection company, we advise people to keep them for 6 years just in case some company thinks you didnt pay them when you did. Also keep any payment receipts and records as well!

donnajunkie

the problem with switching is npower would then want payment of what we owe wouldnt they?
when i divided the amount they estimated into 26 payments it came to just over £23. so i am considering just paying that each fortnight. although i think i may have to tell them that to avoid them stopping the card payment scheme.
if when we get our next quarterly statement it looks like we are ahead then i plan to ask them to reduce it. i think part of what contributed to the current problem is that i think when they set it at £14 a fortnight a year ago that that was too low and we are now paying the price for that.

thanks again to everyone.

computerwoman

:j When I switch to powergen I had an option I could pay npower what I owed (which I did) or powergen could take the debt on for me, it would mean paying something extra off the bill each other but go direct debit and you get a discount anyway and you get a discount loyalty for staying with them last year when everything went up and I didnt go on capped energy straight away my bill was £300 for dual fuel but I got £77. knocked off this with loyalty discounts which isn't bad, do any other companies do this. hope this helps T:j