Campaign to ditch the non-DD surcharge?

G6JPG

Richie-from-the-Boro wrote: »

- how often do you get 'the' paper bill ?
- annual / quarterly / monthly ?

e.on do monthly, Southern Electric do quarterly.

spiro

If any of the big 6 could say 'we only accept DD customers' their organisation would be a lot smaller and hopefully their prices cheaper. The problem with pay on bill customers is their priorities for paying bills, after mortgage/rent gas & elec are about number 10 well behind things like Sky & mobile phone. They know they cant be cut off (unlike Sky etc) so a percentage take the p!ss.
In europe they are not so nice and have a 'dont pay dont get' approach, draconian but it works.

Richie-from-the-Boro

For close to 18 years [old DOS 2k internet modems] I've had the net. The early Dragon became Comcast became NTL became Virgin. NTL billing became almost unworkable and so I've been paying a penalty of £5pm [£60pa] to both NTL & Virgin for non-DD whilst paying instant direct electronic bank transfer. That taking away control from NTL / Virgin has cost me £7200 over that period.

But then I had a problem with NTL / Virgin, I have never had a problem with the utilities of water & electricity delivery & billing. All organisations have a 'accounting preference model' for bill collection, and 99% have that preference as DD. Anyone choosing to demand a payment method outside DD can / will be accommodated but the cheapest energy is e-account / paperless / reading supplied [monthly if you have any sense] annual ÷ 12 = monthly DD.

Anyone choosing an option other than e-account / paperless / reading supplied annual ÷ 12 = monthly DD will generally be paying more than the rest of us. Their choice, but once a household goes outside the utilities accounting preference model they either lose a benefit or are given a penalty for so doing. Whether this is moral or accounting blackmail is irrelevant - its legal, its what 99% of the population do. It is the way it is, pay the penalty as I do with my Virgin bill an accept a £60 a year additional surcharge for being obstinate, or pay DD and get your energy cheaper.

ic

You have a choice who your supplier is - go with Ebico, they charge everybody the same, regardless of payment method. Why elect to go with a company and then battle them? It doesn't make sense, you are free to take your business elsewhere.

Cardew

ic wrote: »

You have a choice who your supplier is - go with Ebico, they charge everybody the same, regardless of payment method. Why elect to go with a company and then battle them? It doesn't make sense, you are free to take your business elsewhere.

The problem is that Ebico are expensive unless you have low consumption.

ic

Cardew wrote: »

The problem is that Ebico are expensive unless you have low consumption.

So, despite the fact that other suppliers are cheaper for high users even though they "charge" for none-direct debit payments, its time to campaign against them?

Its the usual "I'm not paying to check in", "I'm not paying a debit card fee", "I'm not paying for printed statements", "I'm not paying for an 0845 phone number" etc etc etc.

Ignore the itemised costs and look at the package as a whole. Pick a supplier based on cost and service that fits what you want. Don't pick a supplier then complain about how they itemise the service.

If they stop charging people for not paying by direct debit, they'll find another way to charge instead - generally by upping the price for everybody if there's not another way around it.

Cardew

ic wrote: »

So, despite the fact that other suppliers are cheaper for high users even though they "charge" for none-direct debit payments, its time to campaign against them?

I am not sure of the point you are making.

We are not talking about 'high users' here. The average annual consumption in UK is 16,500kWh gas and 3,300kWh electricity.

The cheapest tariff for that consumption in my area(Midlands) and paying quarterly on receipt of bill, is £1,234. Ebico costs £1,358 - so 10% more expensive. Ironically this cheaper tariff is with SSE who handle all Ebico's billing etc in the same call centre.

So for the same service, from the same company, paying by the same method(quarterly) Ebico costs £124 more for someone with average consumption.

The cheapest tariff paying by DD is £1,151. Incidentally for the sheer convenience of paying by DD, I would pay by that method even if there were no discount.

fionajbanana

I worked for a company that did charge customers that did not pay by direct debit. Part of my job was to call these customers 8 days after their payments should have been received by us.

99.9% of the customers did not have a direct debit set up and said cheque was in the post etc. The other 0.1% were customers when they changed jobs and had to wait 6 weeks before their first pay, had problems with their bank account etc. So if you can budget, save a few quid a month without being phoned up - set up a DD!

Paying by DD is so much easier, stress free, cheaper and more MSE as you can budget.

The energy suppliers have been charging less for a unit of energy for years - way before BT, Sky etc put a bill handling fee on non-DD customers.

I did rent a place out (2004) and I had no option to change suppliers and pay by DD and it was difficult to budget as the quarterly bills varied from £150 to £350 (bloody awful waste of money storage heaters) and the biggest bill was paid by my annual bonus! There were colleagues treating themselves to the latest games consoles, a last minute break to the Med etc with their bonus and I paid for my leccy!

Plus with DD, I am not wasting precious time queuing up at banks and post offices paying the bills. They are all taken in the early hours - ie when I'm asleep.

Mr_ChriZ

G6JPG wrote: »

{Before I start this post: would you look after this £5 note for me, by putting it with the other money in your wallet?}


It goes both way though. They've given you unlimited access to their gas/electric.

So please look after this £5 note for me. dummy dumm I've now taken £10 of your gas...I'll pay later.

They also then make money off any credit you've given them in surplus but then give you some back in the form of a discount.
All seems fair to me.

Umistboy

How can you campaign against a "surcharge" that doesn't exist?

I accept that you aren't receiving the DD discount but surely you are only being charged for what you actually used?

All companies are allowed to offer their customers a discount if it encourages the customers to guarantee that their payments will always be made on time. This seems sensible to me for both the customer and the company.

However, if a customer rejects this discount and insists on paying the full amount for what they have used then that's their choice but this IS NOT A SURCHARGE as they are not paying for more than they have used.

Or am I missing something here?