Direct debit for energy doubled!

Daybyday

Hi all

I'm with Scottish power for both gas and electricity. I was paying £54 a month and then last October after I gave them my first quarters refines they dropped the direct debit down to £29.

I've just given them my readings for the last quarter and my direct debit has gone up to £65. I'm slightly outraged by the jump. I thought they were meant to try to make the dd payments even through out the year? I should also say that I gave them the whole years worth of energy use for the year before.

I'm locked in until December with £100 exit few.

Is there anything I can do?

martinlewisjunior

Hi DaybyDay,

You have to pay for your actual usage, remember the monthly payments are estimates, so after the winter break when you submit your meter readings your direct debit will go up as you are likely to be in debt. In 3 months when you submit your meter readings again you would have paid off your debt and your direct debit will go down for the summer. You can check if you're in debt by checking your bill.

I would also look at submitting your meter readings more frequently, this can help better prevent any shockers later on down the line.

On a side note don't leave because you're unhappy about under paying for months? Ask them to go to £54 a month and then this might level out as that seems to be the average, then when winter comes around there won't be any shockers.

System

Were you slightly outraged when the direct debit went down to £29?

matelodave

That's the problem I had with Scottish Power, they review your consumption over a three month period, so your DD goes up and down like a yo-yo.

You should have taken charge of the situation and not allowed the reduction to £29 because it's obvious that £29 is far to little. They've had to increase the DD above your original £54 to compensate as you've now got to make up the shortfall to enable your account to balance out by the end of the year.

I bet that you weren't all that outraged when it went down by nearly a half, so you shouldn't be now it's gone back up again.

If you you want to move before then you'll have to pay the arrears that you've built up together with the early termination fee.

If you read your meter regularly (at least once a month) and use the SP online account you'll see how your energy consumption profile changes over the year, using probably 65-70% of it between November and March and the other 30-35% between April and October, so the last thing you should do is reduce your DD just before winter starts.

ryan.r

To avoid such drastic changes to your monthly bill why not submit meter readings once a month? Keeps you on top of your usage and can quickly see that when winter hits your usage shoots up so you can expect to pay more.

If you submit one meter reading after all of the winter months of course its going to surge up as you'll be in debt as there is no way £29 a month would cover anyone's winter usage unless they refused to have the heating on!

Agree with the previous poster, shouldn't have let them drop it to £29 just before the winter. If you had said you wanted to continue paying £54 instead then it would have covered you.

Scottish_Power

Daybyday wrote: »

Hi all

I'm with Scottish power for both gas and electricity. I was paying £54 a month and then last October after I gave them my first quarters refines they dropped the direct debit down to £29.

I've just given them my readings for the last quarter and my direct debit has gone up to £65. I'm slightly outraged by the jump. I thought they were meant to try to make the dd payments even through out the year? I should also say that I gave them the whole years worth of energy use for the year before.

I'm locked in until December with £100 exit few.

Is there anything I can do?

Hi Daybyday

Firstly I would like to apologies for the issues you have encounter with you direct debt.

If you could possibly email me at Social@scottishpower.com with the following information,
your MSE handle in the subject heading
your full address
your name and telephone number
and some details of the issues you have encountered
I can look into this for you.

Kind Regards
Danielle

mrajb

I know what you mean about the Scottish Power direct debit rollercoaster - mine ended up so high that I've built up a £1675 balance in credit and am now struggling to get my money back.

I've contacted Customer Services and they transferred me to Complaints who have yet to contact me even though we arranged a time and date to discuss the issue which has now passed.

It's all very well saying that people should take actual readings - I've supplied the readings and still can't get my money, even though I'm under, not over what was expected. I'm actually switching because things have got so bad and Scottish Power have acknowledged that I'm massively in credit, have promised to address it and then have missed their own deadline and gone silent!

I can't wait until I switch and 8 weeks have gone past so that I can contact the ombudsman to get my money back. It's all very fishy - Scottish Power have restricted my access online so I can no longer see what my meter readings were throughout my years with them and they have deleted records of bills and average consumption for the last year.

I've just been back to my account and noticed that they are saying that my balance is up to the last bill which they now say was in May last year - very dodgy as I had 2-3 bills paid up this year let alone those paid towards the end of last year!

I'd love to hear their explanation for these actions!?

Nick_C

I don't think this problem is unique to Scottish Power. British Gas and Ovo aren't very good at coming up with accurate annual forecasts either.

After you've been in a property for a year, you know what your consumption is. Use that to work out your annual costs and make sure your DD covers it.

matelodave

It's always a good idea to keep your own records and to download copies of your statements and bills on a regular basis (ideally monthly).

You don't need to print them, but keeping a soft copy of the PDF can help you in the future if or when it all goes wrong. It's too late when something goes awry or the account gets blocked etc and you've failed to save your own evidence.

I've got all my bills/statements going back over eight years - just in case I get a funny letter trying to claim any arrears from any of the companies that I've been with (Eon, EDF, Npower, Scottish Power, First Utility, GB Energy, SSE and now Iresa)

I'm surprised that mrajb has let his account get so far into credit - checking bills and statements and getting them corrected at regular intervals would have flagged up the fact that his DD was all over the place and could have been sorted out. I have to say that Scottish Power was the worst at faffing about, but First Utility came a pretty close second.

dogshome

Your D/Debit is all guesswork, until that is, a supplier has your consumption figures for an entire year.

In your own interests take monthly meter readings, particularly on the anniversary of the day you joined them
With these figures you can calculate your annual consumption and D/Debit figure for yourself, and give accurate figures when you change supplier

System

Daybyday wrote: »

I'm locked in until December with £100 exit few.

Is there anything I can do?

Switch to Bulb.

What about exit fees from my current supplier?

We’ll refund your exit fees.

If you leave another supplier with more than 49 days left on a fixed contract, you may be charged an exit fee. But don’t worry, we’ll refund exit fees to your Bulb Account up to £120 (£60 per fuel).

Click here to request a refund of your exit fees. We’ll also email this link to you before your switch completes. Fill in the form and upload a copy, photocopy or scan of your final bill. We’ll credit the amount to your Bulb Account within 2 working days.

Just make sure that the supply address, bill date and exit fee charges are all clearly displayed on the final bill.

The amount will stay as credit in your Bulb Account. If you’d like it refunded to your bank account, or offset against future payments, drop us a line at help@bulb.co.uk.