Big increase in DD for electric

nade10

Hi, I am after a bit of advice, my past electric bills have been estimated, the last one was a meter reading and southern electric say we owe them £400, we have been paying £40 a month and they now want to increase our DD to £110 per month, I think this is unrealistic and cannot afford to pay this much, any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks.

macman

That means you would be paying off the debt at £60 a month over about 7 months. You might get them to extend that to a year, or can you offer something as a lump sum upfront. say £50? Even over 12m you're going to have to pay another £30 a month approx on top of the present £40.
To accumulate £400 debt you must have had several estimated readings, when did you last submit your own reading?

Poosmate

Nade, this happened to me once (it'll never happen again!). BG wanted to put my DD up from £34 to £85 per month as I was £156 in debit to them. I thought it was a bit steep especially 2 months before Christmas so asked if I could pay £50 until after Christmas and pay extra off then. I then received a letter saying the payments were to go up to £232 PER MONTH!!!! EEK! I told the stupid cow at BG under no circumstances should they take that amount from my account as there wouldn't be enough in there anyway and it was completely unjustified. She agreed to accept the original £85 per month.

So come November £232 was taken from my account!! It resulted in me having bank charges for the first time in about 6-7 years and took me a couple of months to recover from it.

I cancelled the DD to them and will never allow them access to my account again. I would rather forego the DD discount and know that my money will stay in my account until they need to be paid.

I believe that one act by BG cost me much more than the value of the DD I have given up with bank charges, interest, being forced to use credit for a couple of months and the stress of it all.

My advice to you would be to make sure you have enough in your account to cover the £110 regardless of whether they agree to accept a lower sum. Also, tackle this debt both by paying extra off in your monthly payments and by reducing your consumption.

I suppose on the up side, a large DD hike does make you resent paying the robbing gets any more than is absolutely necessary so you do become more frugal. Well it worked for me anyway, my electric bill is about £336pa now! Yay!

Hope that helps

Poo

maxmycardagain

nade10 wrote: »

Hi, I am after a bit of advice, my past electric bills have been estimated, the last one was a meter reading and southern electric say we owe them £400, we have been paying £40 a month and they now want to increase our DD to £110 per month, I think this is unrealistic and cannot afford to pay this much, any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks.

We are all guilty of ignoring estimated bills as being way off the mark and hoping they will go away, well you cant, better to read the meter and get the proper bill which would have seen your DD rise to maybe £65 (ish) previously and there would be no debt now, but the damage is done, i had a £777 bill and my DD have risen from £72 to £175, even though the big bill was partly due to a faulty timeswitch, all i can do is - once i have a nil balance - is argue my case using 5/6 months readings to get the DD reduced

Having said that i can remember when there were such folk as "meter readers" and before that when the 50p pieces would result in a repayment every quarter, and most welcome it was too

mattcanary

Meter readers do exist - and it is not our fault if people are not at home when we call and then don;t bother reading the meter when we leave a card saying we tried to read it!

Andy_WSM

nade10 wrote: »

I think this is unrealistic and cannot afford to pay this much, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Stop using so much electric? We all have to pay for what we consume! £40 a month was so obviously underpaying given all the price rises in recent years!

sarahevie

It is possible to only use £40 a month electric - we take quarterly readings and are currently £55 in credit and our electric is only DD £44 a month for a 1930s 3 bed semi.

So we are spending about £40 a month

maxmycardagain

mattcanary wrote: »

Meter readers do exist - and it is not our fault if people are not at home when we call and then don;t bother reading the meter when we leave a card saying we tried to read it!

not every property has meters inside, ours are outside, maybe this should be a legal requirement in building regs?

ours havent been read by a meter reader for 18 months as i know to