Changing address temporary accommodation

victoriavictorious

We're shortly due to exchange on our house sale (with completion a couple of weeks after) but as our purchase has fallen through, we will need to move into temporary accommodation - staying with relatives until we find somewhere else to buy. We will just be paying towards the relatives' bills, as our accommodation will be shared with them. We will probably need to stay there for a few months, or however long our new purchase will take to complete.
Do we give our energy, broadband providers etc our temporary address, or just cancel our present accounts and reapply when we are ready? We plan to keep the same providers once we buy our permanent property.
Will we need to contact each one individually to inform them, as the automated online services, eg IamMoving, don't appear to make any provision for temporary addresses?
Sorry if all this sounds daft but we've always managed to tie in our moves and gone straight from old house to new house without a gap, so have no idea what the procedure is, and I haven't been able to find any info. anywhere.
Thanks!
EDIT - we will be setting up mail redirection

00ec25

sorry but what do you expect your energy provider to bill you for at a property which is already supplied by whoever your relatives buy their energy from?

Of course you close your account, then start again with a new one when you have a place in your own name that needs energy supplied to it.

victoriavictorious

00ec25 wrote: »

sorry but what do you expect your energy provider to bill you for at a property which is already supplied by whoever your relatives buy their energy from?

Of course you close your account, then start again with a new one when you have a place in your own name that needs energy supplied to it.

No obviously I don't expect my energy provider to bill me at my relative's and neither was that my question.

AnotherJoe

They only want your address if they are billing you, they don't need your address otherwise, why would they, they won't be sending you birthday or Xmas cards.
When you leave your house your contracts with them end. In the event you start a new contract with them, you can tell them your new address. Otherwise, they don't care about you and don't want your address.

victoriavictorious

Quizzical_Squirrel wrote: »

I don't know why we're giving OP a hard time here, they're only asking how to maintain their customer accounts through a temporary address change.

It's not a batsh!t crazy assumption, just not the right one in this case.
It's normal to keep other customer accounts when you move so someone might well think they should do this for utilities as well.
They may have to give them their new temporary address for the final bill anyway.

Editing: also, OP, I'm sure you're doing it anyway but make you redirect your mail to doubly ensure you get those final bills.

Thank you Quizzical Squirrel, for replying in a polite manner - that was exactly what I wanted to know.
It used to be the case that if you closed your utility account, you were charged a deposit and effectively had to start again as a new customer.

For my own part, if someone asks a *silly* question on here and I feel I can answer it, I try not to be patronising and make them feel bad just for asking. No one knows everything.
Costs nothing to be pleasant.

ViolaLass

I imagine energy suppliers wouldn't let you close the account until you'd sold the property anyway. Until then, you remain liable for any energy used.

Slinky

It's certainly worth the water supplier knowing if your house is unoccupied. We sent final readings to Anglian after we'd done work on a house and it was empty waiting to find a tenant. Anglian gave us a final bill and there were no standing charges of any sort.

AnotherJoe

ViolaLass wrote: »

I imagine energy suppliers wouldn't let you close the account until you'd sold the property anyway. Until then, you remain liable for any energy used.

Well you'd imagine wrongly, otherwise you could only ever end a contract with your utlity supplier by selling your house !
You can of course close your contract (subject to ts&cs) whenever you want. Or are you saying I can't, for example, stop my sky broadband contract until I sell my house?
Or I can't decide that I am changing to electric only heating and cancel my gas contract? Nope, I'll have to sell my house apparently.

ViolaLass

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Well you'd imagine wrongly, otherwise you could only ever end a contract with your utlity supplier by selling your house !
You can of course close your contract (subject to ts&cs) whenever you want. Or are you saying I can't, for example, stop my sky broadband contract until I sell my house?
Or I can't decide that I am changing to electric only heating and cancel my gas contract? Nope, I'll have to sell my house apparently.

Did you get out of bed on the wrong side?

I said 'energy supplier' not broadband, and I was talking about the OP's specific circumstances. Of course they could change supplier but that's not what they were asking about.

ViolaLass

Thinking on it some more, I suppose the energy company could stop providing elec to you (if you close your account) but if I were a potential buyer and tried the lights when viewing and they didn't work, that would cause me concern.

We've sold our place but can't close the energy account yet as there's the standing charge to cover until we no longer legally own the house.

Edit: d'oh, you'll have sold, won't you. In which case, yes, cancel accounts once completion is done. No benefit to be had by keeping the account open once the house isn't yours.

SG27

Ill be in the same situation soon moving in with parents between selling and buying. Utilities I just plan to cancel.

But what abiut things like driving licence, pasdport, doctors surgery etc do we need to change everyrhing even if for 6 months or so?