Switching and claiming money owed from current suppliers

RoPey_2

Hi
First post here, so please be gentle with me ;-)

We have recently taken the advice of the Money Saving Expert and switched our gas and electricity to a different company. They say it will take about 3 months for the change over to complete.

Currently, one of our suppliers owes us a considerable amount of money, which they said on our last bill, we should leave in situ to cover the annual total as we pay by direct debit.

We don't really want to wait until the changeover to reclaim this, is it OK to phone them and say we want a refund because we are switching or should we wait until the new company have informed them?

Thanks in advance for any advice....

Premier_2

A change of supplier typically takes 4-6 weeks, not 3 months.

I would follow the advice the supplier gave. They will produce you a final bill and should then automatically refund any they owe you.

If you don't like paying monthly 'fixed' amounts then I hope you have chosen a pay on receipt of bill tariff with this newsupplier.
Your account probably is in credit at present as it will be needed to fund the typically heavy winter bills that have not yet been produced.

RoPey_2

Thanks for the advice Premier.

I must have worded my post badly. We don't object to paying by DD at all, that's what we want to do, but in this case, the most recent bill we had from Southern Electric says that they owe us over £250 and last July they had to refund us £230 odd. Obviously if we were staying with them then we would leave the money there, but I was really just wondering whether it would be in order to ask for the refund now because we are just going to be paying more and more each month into a pot we'd rather have in our bank.

However, since you say that the changeover happens in a much shorter time than we'd understood, I guess it's not really an issue.

Thanks so much for your help.

Regards

Premier_2

If I understand you correctly, you have asked and they said wait until the final bill is produced and you will be refunded any credit.

I see the logic in this. It saves the supplier refunding you now and then possibly chasing you later to pay an outstanding amount (dependent on the final bill)

When you agree to pay monthly by DD, there will invariably be times when your account is in credit. The supplier will not refund you each time this occurs.

RoPey_2

Righto - thanks so much for your help.