EDF and DD reviews

duggo1

I joined EDF on 12 October last year, and based on my average consumption in the previous year (11000 KW) my payment was set to £32 a month.

However after my most recent bill (mid May) they now want to put my DD up to £65 as I have a debit on my account of £135.

I think that by the time I've been with them a year I will be more or less back in credit (maybe not quite as I've already used 10,700 KW - but probably a lot of this was due to the hard winter).

Surely they should wait until I've been with them a year to asses my annual usage. Is this a ploy to have me build up a credit with them so I'm always in credit over the summer, rather than balancing out by October?

Can you get your supplier to have your review date with an aim for a zero credit balance in Autumn?

pippy100

Hi, i'm afraid i cannot answer your questions, but i am in the same position having gone from paying approx£60 a month(both gas and electric) to them now wanting £150!!! I also think it won't take long to get back in the black so i think the same as you, and they want a 'reserve' on your account!!
Hopefully someone else will come along and give an explanation.

anniecave

I'm with EDF - joined last August, and I've been expecting them to revise our DDs upwards for the last few months, but they haven't. Both Gas and Electric are too low. I did a budget calculation when we moved in, and my estimate of our usage was a lot better than theirs, and I've been putting money aside every month! Maybe they will wait for the year in our case, then it will go up!

What are they basing the £65 per month on? Is that the deficit spread over 12 months, added to your ongoing consumption? It's always worth checking the figures they use on this, because sometimes they can be wrong. By all means phone them up if you can tell their figures are wrong.

*depressed*

When edf do your dd review this is how it works

it looks at how much you have used over 12 months preferably, if not then 6 months (as a review is done on a 6 monthly basis) if over 6 months then they will predict your usage for the other 6 months using different methods like national averages, and readings you have given etc.

your dd then needs to be set at this amount for your usage, your debit is then split over 6 months and added to your mdd

the aim of a direct debit is that your balance will zero after 12 months, its 12 months from when you started the direct debit, so for some it will be summer some it will be winter thats not something that can be picked unfortunatly.

The reason a 6 month review is done is because at the annual review if they account is £150 or more in debit then this full amount will be taken from your bank account (same as if the account is in credit by £150 or more this will be automatically refunded) therefore the 6 month review is there to ensure that if the review information is followed then there will not be a negative balance to take from the bank account

hope this helps

xxx

duggo1

*depressed* that should mean that the DD is reviewed again in October. I still think I might call them up - it's a big jump from £32 to £65 a month.

I estimate that I'll use 13000 KW this year. Does anyone know what that would could on EDF's online 5 tariff?

*depressed*

It will depend on what part of the country your in and also is it online 5 or online saver version 5?

xxx

duggo1

It's online V5.
I've just called them, and gave them the most recent reading and we have agreed on setting the DD at £45 - much better than going from £32 to £65!

*depressed*

ah good good, glad we could help (ps quick tip, there are cheaper tarrifs now available, those being online saver version 5 and online saver version 6 if you are looking to keep ya bills lower)

xxx

Funky_Gibbon

I've always found that EDF overestimate the DD payments needed by big margin. I checked my account the other day for the first time in a few months and saw that I was a in credit by a fairly large amount of money (for me anyway) because they are overcharging me for both gas and electricity by about 30-40%

I've phoned them a number of times before to get them to reduce their DD charges to something more realistic to my usage but they always push them back up within a month or two.

I guess it's my fault for not switching suppliers often enough, they consider me a customer who they can rip off without fear of losing. That's about to change... :beer:

duggo1

*depressed* wrote: »

ah good good, glad we could help (ps quick tip, there are cheaper tarrifs now available, those being online saver version 5 and online saver version 6 if you are looking to keep ya bills lower)

xxx

Is it easy to swap tariffs with EDF? I assume there are no penalites for leaving the V5?

1981trouble

We have just had an identical issue.

After problems a couple of years ago with ridiculous bills we now keep a spreadsheet of meter readings each month and record how many units we are using each month as a result we could see that they were ridiculously over estimating the payments.

We rang EDF and they immediately agreed to lower payments and they said their recommendations were based on the data they had which was 6 months worth (in winter!) so were happy to use our data and records.

So - if you have previous bills from other companies you can see what your yearly usage (in kwh) is and divide that by 12 and use that as your guide for what you need to pay (we also added about £5 on to that to ensure we would be in credit for winter instead or catching up after winter). Then ring EDF and tell them this usage and see if they will change the payments.


Edit - i see you've kind of done that already. Can def recommend the spreadsheet though as you can keep track and generally we know what the bill will be before its sent out!