Paying off utility bill with credit card?

BournemouthHan

Hi,

Just wondering, would you advise to pay a big utility bill (£500) off with my credit card, which is 0% until Jan 2015, or by arranging a payment plan with our gas/electricity company?

If using the credit card, it would be paid off over about 5 months as we can spare about £100 at the moment.

Any help would be great fully received

Thanks x

chanz4

most do, however a lot charge a fee

Nada666

It would make more sense to switch to paying by direct debit and changing tariff - you will then save 10 or 20% off the price of your energy. Use the credit card to pay off your present balance and switch now. Even if there is a charge it is likely to be less than the savings you make changing tariff.

(It is far easier to use DDs for energy and your credit card for supermarket or other purchases rather than vice versa.)

BournemouthHan

We don't usually use that much gas, so the bill is unusually high (in fact, we have only used 3 units in the last 4 days) so have absolutely no idea why our bill is so so high.

Over 72 days (12 of which the boiler was off as we were away) we used 303units apparently?! Seems ridiculous as over the last 4 days we only used 3?!

Usually we have the spare money to pay off our bills in full every quarter, this is the first time we have not been able to pay it off. Very worrying.

matelodave

You need to be reading your meter regularly to see when you are using all this energy. It helps you tweak your controls to reduce your consumption and to identify if anything is going wrong so you can do something about it. Just waiting for a ginormous quarterly energy bill to come in is too late - you've used it all by then
Likewise it enables you to monitor your bills and make sure that any under or over estimates are corrected immediately.

BournemouthHan

We have never received a big quarterly bill before. This time last year our bill was less than £200, so our usage this quarter is completely out of sync with our past usage.

We usually read our meters monthly but due to Christmas etc we left it until now to do so instead.

We are monitoring it closely now and appear to use 1 unit a day.

Very odd.

wakeupalarm

Nada666 wrote: »

It would make more sense to switch to paying by direct debit and changing tariff - you will then save 10 or 20% off the price of your energy.

Which energy company tariff gives 10 or 20% off for paying by DD? I thought it was generally around 6% or lower.

Nada666

wakeupalarm wrote: »

Which energy company tariff gives 10 or 20% off for paying by DD? I thought it was generally around 6% or lower.

Yes the difference between paying by direct debit and paying by cash on any one particular tariff is typically only 6%. But if you shop around the cheapest combination of tariffs may yield far cheaper results. If already on a fixed or cheap tariff the difference is small. But if still on a standard tariff the difference is more significant.

(In my region - £1465 on standard tariffs, £1060 on the cheapest. A 27% saving.)