One problem with paying bills by DD

vet8

We recently moved house and I have discovered what seems to be a flaw in paying utility bills by DD.

All of these companies always charge you in advance and always seem to overcharge you, so when I moved house they all owed me some money. The council tax was fine, I e-mailed them and they credited my bank account with the £285 within days.

Scottish Power owed me £57. It took several e-mails, 2 letters and 3 phone calls to get it back after about 4 months. The ones that really annoyed me were BT and Southeast Water. With both of them, when I moved into my new house I kept the same utility company, so all they had to do was transfer the credit to my new account you would have thought. Even though I filled in the forms giving my previous address and account numbers neither were able to work out that I had moved house and they owed me money. BT have finally sent 2 cheques to reimburse me almost 6 months after I moved.

Now none of these companies made any attempt to return me the overpaid money until I asked for it and, in several cases I had to ask repeatedly. This made me wonder how many people do not get their money back. When you move there is so much going on and it is easy to overlook things, I had not realised that BT owed me money for several months for example. I bet these utility companies make a lot of money by not returning overpaid amounts when people move house. In all the advice about house moving I have never heard anyone mention this.

Mikeyorks

This is rather similar to your thread on the identical subject a few weeks ago? I remembered the title.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/40377676#Comment_40377676

I pay all my bills by DD ........ and have never had problems with refunds / final bill on a house move. All credits / debits normally resolved within a couple of weeks of the move.. And none needing a nudge to refund an overpayment ..... albeit some do it via cheque, which is a nuisance.

Scottish_Power

Hi vet8

Sorry to hear about your situation regarding the credit balance on your final ScottishPower account. I have no idea why this would have taken so much contact from you to obtain this refund balance. The refund payments would normally be issued to you by cheque automatically if the account has been closed down to an accurate meter reading. This cheque payment would then be received by you within 10 working days. The system may not automatically refund the credit balance if the account has been closed down to an estimated meter reading, as it will be expecting an accurate meter reading to be updated before the credit it returned. This is why we ask customers to contact us, if they can, when they move out of a property and provide an accurate closing meter reading. Either way, it should not have resulted in you needing to email, write and call to obtain this credit and I apologise for this.

Kind Regards

Colin @ ScottishPower

Cmdr_Bond

When I had an account with SP, and we had overpaid by direct debit, we received a cheque for £256 !!! automatically - hadn't stopped using them and hadn't asked for it.

Might be because it was for quite a huge sum though...

lawrie28

The solution is either to lower your payments, or start paying your DD in the winter months. That way you build up a debt on the account, which is gradually paid off in the summer months, so your back to zero over the 12 month cycle.

vet8

Lawrie28, I am not sure if that works. I always seemed to be in credit with Scottish Power. For a whole year they owed me over £100 and when the cost of electricity rose and I started to get the money back as my DD was not enough to cover the usage they increased the amount I paid each month and at that stage they still owed me £80.

And we did provide a final meter reading, we even received a final bill, but no cheque for 4 months.

Fiddlestick

vet8 wrote: »

I bet these utility companies make a lot of money by not returning overpaid amounts when people move house.

By law the utility companies must take a physical reading from the meter a certain number of times per year.

Other than that, they only really run off estimates unless YOU supply them with updated readings (I do this on a monthly basis with E.ON).

When you move out and give them the final readings, they calculate the final bill and will either ask you to settle an underpayment or refund your overpayment.

This is to do with how often they read the meter and absolutely nothing to do with Direct Debit - the same problem would happen if you were paying by standing order or PO giro.

It's not a fiddle either.

If you don't like it, give your utility companies more frequent readings.

vet8

I gave them frequent readings and a final reading when we moved. They did not send anyone around to physically read the meter.

I do not know why some people on here are so aggressive.!

My comment was that I only got the money owed when I chased it up and that applied to all 4 utility companies. I was just offering advice to other house movers that this is something they might need to look out for.

NFH

scottishpower_company_representative wrote: »

The refund payments would normally be issued to you by cheque automatically if the account has been closed down to an accurate meter reading. This cheque payment would then be received by you within 10 working days.

Slight deviation from the original topic, but why do you not send payments straight back to customers' bank accounts? It seems very one-sided that you require customers to pay by direct debit (or suffer a surcharge) in order to reduce your costs, but when you pay money back to customers, you use a method that is costly or time-consuming for the customer to process, as it requires a trip to the bank and a delay in receipt of the funds.

Scottish_Power

Hi NFH

I fully understand your concern and it has been highlighted to us on a number of occasions. It is a commercial decision that has been made to refund payments in this way and I agree that it would be far easier for the payments to be sent direct to your bank. It is an issue that I have highlighted previously to see whether any action can be taken.

Kind Regards

Colin @ ScottishPower

NFH

scottishpower_company_representative wrote: »

I fully understand your concern and it has been highlighted to us on a number of occasions. It is a commercial decision that has been made to refund payments in this way and I agree that it would be far easier for the payments to be send direct to your bank. It is an issue that I have highlighted previously to see whether any action can be taken.

Colin, thanks for replying. In the meantime, perhaps it would be appropriate if Scottish Power increased the amount on refunds by cheque by the same percentage that customers are surcharged when they don't pay by direct debit? That would be fair.