Scottish Power Direct Debit Increase.

CoxyBoy

We were paying about £170 pm for combined Gas&Elec with our previous supplier. With the warnings about price increases, we followed advice from the MSE emails and used the price comparison sites to find the best fixed price supplier.

I used our gas and elec consumption for the past 12 months to make sure I got reasonably accurate quotes. Scottish Power came out the best with their "Online Fixed Price Energy April 2014" deal.

So we switched and they started with a Direct Debit of £114 pm based on the above details.

Anyway, 3 months later and I get an email saying they're increasing our DD to £221 pm!!!!!! THAT'S A 91% INCREASE!

Here are the details:

£114.79 paid per month for 3 months Dec 2012 - Feb 2013
=£344 in credit

Bill for those 3 months £653 (actual meter readings)
= £308.63 in debit

The Scottish Power website gives us the Direct Debit Forecast:
Forecast usage for next 12 months: £2254
plus £308.63 debit
=£2642.44
Divide this by 12 months
=£221 per month

But where did this forecast of £2254 pa come from?

Well, it's 4 times this quarter's bill. So basically, the year's estimate is assuming our energy usage will continue to be the same as the past 3 winter months!

Is this right? In the past, our power suppliers' direct debits meant our balance would be in debit during the winter but move into credit over the summer, etc. Scottish Power seems a bit more 'blunt' in their approach to keeping everything in the black. We're going to end up using them like a deposit account!

They say they'll review it again in 3 months time - but I doubt they'll fix it to the summer usage!

Seems a very cheeky way to get you to switch to their products with a promised rate, then just increase it by nearly 100% !

:mad:

Coxy

DreamerV

Most companies do try and stay in the black, building up credit over summer, and running it down to a zero balance over winter. They don't want it to be in debit for long at all. It does seem a bit unfair to base a year's usage on 3 winter months. The time of year I tend to switch is September or so and with no time to build up credit, I go into a lot of debit over winter. They try to stop this by doing similar to what has happened to you (estimating the whole year on winter usage). I just send them an email justification, with calculations, for a certain direct debit. They have without fail, always said that's fine, even though I set it to zero balance on the anniversary (meaning I have a debit balance for much of the year coming up to 0, rather than a credit balance running down to 0). Presumably, you would also be able to do this if you can do some calculations to justify why you should pay a lower amount.

Wywth

CoxyBoy wrote: »

We were paying about £170 pm for combined Gas&Elec with our previous supplier. With the warnings about price increases, we followed advice from the MSE emails and used the price comparison sites to find the best fixed price supplier.

I used our gas and elec consumption for the past 12 months to make sure I got reasonably accurate quotes. Scottish Power came out the best with their "Online Fixed Price Energy April 2014" deal.

So we switched and they started with a Direct Debit of £114 pm based on the above details.

Anyway, 3 months later and I get an email saying they're increasing our DD to £221 pm!!!!!! THAT'S A 91% INCREASE!

Here are the details:

£114.79 paid per month for 3 months Dec 2012 - Feb 2013
=£344 in credit

Bill for those 3 months £653 (actual meter readings)
= £308.63 in debit

The Scottish Power website gives us the Direct Debit Forecast:
Forecast usage for next 12 months: £2254
plus £308.63 debit
=£2642.44
Divide this by 12 months
=£221 per month

But where did this forecast of £2254 pa come from?

Well, it's 4 times this quarter's bill. So basically, the year's estimate is assuming our energy usage will continue to be the same as the past 3 winter months!

Is this right? In the past, our power suppliers' direct debits meant our balance would be in debit during the winter but move into credit over the summer, etc. Scottish Power seems a bit more 'blunt' in their approach to keeping everything in the black. We're going to end up using them like a deposit account!

They say they'll review it again in 3 months time - but I doubt they'll fix it to the summer usage!

Seems a very cheeky way to get you to switch to their products with a promised rate, then just increase it by nearly 100% !

:mad:

Coxy

Not much to go on there, but in very simple terms, £650 per quarter x 4 = £2600 p.a

Knock off a bit because, as you say, it was the higher winter period, then that leaves you with £2254

To be more accurate, you would need to look deeper into your individual gas & electricity usage and what you actually use them for.
All that really significantly affects seasonal usage nowadays is
what you use for space heating. (obviously use quite a bit in winter and perhaps none in summer)
Everything else remains pretty constant.
e.g. if you use gas for hot water and cooking, this really isn't affected that much seasonally.
Lighting used to cause a significant increase in electricity consumption due to needing lights on much longer in the shorter winter days, but with low energy light bulbs now often used, lighting really often doesn't use much electricity at all in the scheme of things
(your big hitters like your fridge/freezer, washing machine, dishwashers etc all use about the same - arguably the fridge/freezer will consume more electricity in summer as it has to work harder)

It may seem cheeky, but unless you can come up with:
a) why the original assumption by the supplier is perhaps incorrect
and
b) a fully reasoned, and logical calculation of your own
then I fear you are onto a losing battle trying to get anything reviewed at this stage.

When you did the comparison to switch suppliers, what annual consumption figures in kWh did you use?
What was the previous supplier & tariff that you considered £170 per month was paying for that annual consumption?
What supply region are you in (or first part of your postcode)?

It seems to me you probably made a mistake on that comparison which has now left you in this situation. Using the wrong figures may also mean you are not on the best tariff for you, so I do hope you give us the details so we can double check for you

[Deleted User]

npower doing the same thing...

Currently pay £88pm, they now want £135pm. Have been with them for years and the £88 already keeps me in credit even after the winter bill just applied to account. Bit of a battle to get it reduced but back the way it was now. It's getting to the time of year where the solar starts to make quite an impact too.

Idiots. The computer says we want £135, eye whatever. I only need pencil and paper to micro manage my useage :mad:

Fire_Fox

You are not supposed to go into debt in winter, but to remain at nothing or in credit year round, just supply meter readings every month for a while. Also telephone them now with your actual usage in units not pounds over the past year based on old bills and ask for the DD to be manually reviewed.

CoxyBoy

Here's the lowdown from last years with E.ON. The last 4 full complete quarterly bills:

bill date Gas (kwh) Elec (kwh)
01-Dec-11 3417 1421
01-Mar-12 7895 3400
01-Jun-12 5893 2630
01-Sep-12 1947 1361


annual total:
19152 8812

I have a chart, but can't see how to include it.

The last bill from SP was:

bill date Gas (kwh) Elec (kwh)
08-Feb-13 7812 2885

They project for the usage for the coming 12 months:
Gas 22349
Elec 10855

keith1950

Hi, according to the comparison sites, from your 11-12 EON figures but using your SP tariff you should have a DD of around £150.

I used our gas and elec consumption for the past 12 months to make sure I got reasonably accurate quotes. Scottish Power came out the best with their "Online Fixed Price Energy April 2014" deal.

I cannot see that they were 'reasonably' accurate quotes as it seems the EON direct debit was about the right level so how could you honestly expect to pay only £114/month, something must have been wrong with your figures.

Whilst your gas useage is only slightly above average your electricity useage is 'sky' high.

With EON you used 8812 yet average useage is only around 3500.
Is there a reason for this abnormally high electricity useage ?.....if not then request to have your meter checked.

I accept that the SP projected figures seem slightly excessive, but as I said ,there must have been an error in the figures when entering them in the comparison websites.

Nada666

There is in an error with your/their initial quote. Depending on your region you should have expected a bill of £160 to £170 per month. Are you sure the annual figures you quote today were the ones you used when you applied? When comparing tariffs it is good to have one rounded figure to use every time to estimate the costs. You could use 19,000 and 9,000.

The extrapolation from the one quarter is not outlandish -16% and 20% off. They have not just multiplied by four.

It is a long time since energy companies allowed you to slip in to debt - you are now expected to be in credit all year round (with the year ending at the end of March).

It is annoying that companies review debits every quarter - but your case shows both the pros and cons. It decreases the size of credits/debits that consumers build up so stops there being a massive difference to find after a year but it does defeat the purpose of the debit in the first place by making changes quite large while things settle down or an error is caught. It is important to check your own expected costs as minor adjustments result in larger than intuited changes in the debit.

Finally, you might want to look at what is eating up all your electricity and see if any reductions in actual consumption can be made rather than juggling when the payments are.