powergen want to up my direct debit from £77.50 to £237.00 per month

edmond

i am with powergen at the moment.
I pay £77.50 per month direct debit for online dule fuel ecom 7.
my avergae spend has been about 100.00 per month
Everything in my house is electric apart from the fire which is gas and has never been used since we have been in ther house.
i have monitered the last months use and we used no gas and on the electic we use 191kw low and 713kw at high total 904 per month.
i dont know if this is high or not.
we have storage heaters in the house and i know these can be more expensive to run that normal heating. with the winter months comming i know they up there direct debit to compensate for the additional electris and gas that you use, but an additonal £159.50 seems very very steep.
i live in a three bedroom house, i have 2 vey small children so the washing machine is on everyday and when the weather is bad we use the tumble dryer.
the computer is on alot, along with the baby monitors but i cannot think of much more to turn of, we could be a little better at turning lights of
any help would be great.

dellxps

edmond,
i presume you recieved a letter from Powergen saying your direct debits should go up? Sometime the computers make calculations which are wrong, and although they shouldnt happen they do. I'd ring powergen on monday morning and find out whether this new amount is correct.

• Make sure that you are on the economy 7 tarriff and on the most up to date online tariff (energy online extra saver version3)
• Check your bills, have they showed that there has been a debit building up on your account?
• Your direct debits should not be that high, there are 8 of us in my house (grandparents moved in last year)- we have 4 bedrooms, gas and elec, tumble dryer and washer on a lot, gas heaters and radiators used. Our DD's were £143.00 on capped prices then came down to £114 on the online extra saver.
• Find out how much you can afford to increase your direct debit by. Then if they say that the new calculation is correct let them know that you can only afford xx.xx amount and then offer to pay off outstanding amounts every quarter.

I think that the dd they have proposed is not just for your usage but also to chip away at any debit you have built up on your account. You did say you normally use £100.00 a month on average but only pay £77.50. It might be easier to pay by debit card the debit on your account and then up your dd to £100.

MAIN ADVICE: GIVE THEM A CALL!

edmond

thanks for the info i do intend to call powergen on monday.
i moved over to powergen in june, they charged me for gas i was not using as they assumed i was giving false readings this came to £770.84 which as has been credited back to my account.
my accoumnt is £27.45 in debit

Terrylw1

Hi,

Before you make that call there are a few things you need to consider first which will help you argue it out with them.

- are your bills estimates? If so, are they accurate to the readings on your meter? If not, and you have been underestimated it may be catching up.
- have you had a meter change in the last year? Was it correctly reflected in your bill? If not, that may have caused a sharp increase due to incorrect readings
- heating based on electricity is going to be more than gas. So, you need to examine the times that you use it. Are you using any in peak time? If yes, can you use it more in off peak time to reduce your peak bill?
- it doesn't appear that they are trying to chip away at a debt as dellxps first thought. However, if you've been under estimated (or new estimate is way to high i.e. reading is higher than that of your meter causing a big jump) they may have added a lot of debt that you won't see until you get your next bill.
- nice one, you've monitored your consumption which comes out at 30.13 units per day (6.37 off peak per day, 23.77 peak per day). Now this is based over a month so is not a true daily average as you have to take readings each day to see the fluctuations. However, you don't use much at off peak but do have a lot used at peak. So, you need to understand what is running at peak times to cause that and see if there is any way to reduce it or make it cheaper.
- as dellxps says, get the bill charges to the cheapest rate.

Now, if your last bill has readings that match your meter you can easily calculate what you think your DD should be. Since Suppliers does this in pro rata fashion at the most basic level, you can also do that.

So, (whilst not that accurate since you need to add in something for winter and lower it for summer) you could literally just times your Sept month by 12 for a yearly total and times by your charges. Then divide by your DD months (10 or 12 depending on Supplier???) and see if this comes out anywhere close. If it doesn't then there's either a mistake in calcualtion or you may have a nasty bill on the way for something which may be correct or incorrect.

Thats a very basic way to do it, but you could try.

Have a look at this thread as PGen have an online tool which will do this for you as far as average usage goes...1 word of advice, these tools are fine when your consumption is correct, as soon as something goes wrong causing a huge jump, it will throw these comparison tools badly off.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=572260


Perhaps worth a go. It also may show a sharp recent increase that may have caused your DD to do up e.g. under estimation catching up...

If your Supplier has over estimated you, give them a current reading to bring your bill back down.

Honestly, as dellxps has said about computers, readings have to be keyed in by staff a lot and transposing your E7 readings could produce you a massive bill.It may be as simply as that causing it...

Good luck

Glenn_likes_2_help_others

I'm afraid Terry has his 'peak and off peak' around the wrong way in his calcs. As is stands you are using approx 4 - 1 (peak to off peak) on your econ 7 which is about average for a house..

The earlier suggestion to check your supplier has the 'day and night' rates in the correct order is the first thing to check.

standard econ. 7 runs from 00.00hrs till 07.00 or 00.30 till 07.30hrs but please check your time switch is set for the correct time, some are 4 - 5hrs out, this means your cheap tariff is maybe 04.30 till 11.30.

Regards
Glenn
P.S.if you would like to know how to check timers please reply

Peartree

Powergen really messed me round by arbitrarily changing my direct debits on the basis of what turned out to be inexplicable estimated readings. I then decided it was time to sort it out and e-mailed them asking for the date and details of my last actual reading. The sent me the readings and, strangely, immediately reduced my direct debit. I think they deduced that I was considering switching because of the questions I was asking! I then gave them an actual reading which, luckily, was exactly a year from my previous actual reading. I then asked them for a full breakdown of how my direct debit was calculated. To their credit, they replied with a very detailed response. It turned out I was over £300 in credit and they reduced my direct debit again. I asked them to refund that money to my account and they did, very quickly. I think if you ask them for an explanation, they'll be really helpful.

However, with the information I'd got I could now do a comparison and so I switched to another supplier to save a bit of money.

Powergen's customer service was very, very good when I started asking questions. I learnt a big lesson though. It is easy when you are busy to let it go but you need to keep a close eye on your usage and keep providing readings to your supplier. My resolution is to keep doing that as I don't want to run up arrears so they whack me with a hugely increased direct debit nor do I want to end up with them sitting on my money - I want the interest not them!

And also to keep a close eye on my usage. Energy bills have got really expensive and, for example, when I started looking around I found that I had a DVD player and a freeview box, in my spare room, which I hadn't used or looked at for months, sitting on standby and costing me money.

Terrylw1

Glenn_likes_2_help_others wrote: »

I'm afraid Terry has his 'peak and off peak' around the wrong way in his calcs. As is stands you are using approx 4 - 1 (peak to off peak) on your econ 7 which is about average for a house..

The earlier suggestion to check your supplier has the 'day and night' rates in the correct order is the first thing to check.

standard econ. 7 runs from 00.00hrs till 07.00 or 00.30 till 07.30hrs but please check your time switch is set for the correct time, some are 4 - 5hrs out, this means your cheap tariff is maybe 04.30 till 11.30.

Regards
Glenn
P.S.if you would like to know how to check timers please reply

Cheers Glenn, I started typing the post 1 way then changed to another. Corrected the calc and points. Must have been distracted by something of interest on the telly!