Paying by Direct Debit with a Smart Meter

Aroundincircles

Hi. I have several properties that I let to students on a bills included basis. As a rule I don't sign up to Utility company tariffs that require direct debit payments as, in my experience, the monthly payment is always estimated in the utility company's favour to the tune of several hundred £'s per year. However I am now considering having Smart Meters installed. Might be a daft question but would this mean that the monthly direct debit payment would always be the actual amount used or would the company still be using an estimate to my detriment?

Robin9

Always an estimate - but you will get accurate bills

Chubbs1

You should be able to pay by direct debit whole amount monthly. If you have smart meters your company will pull a read every month, bill you for the energy used and your direct debit for that amount will usually be talked 14 days later. Might vary a bit from company to company but that!!!8217;s the just of it

ConsumerMatt

Mine (from BG) are estimated.

I don't seem to be able to set the Direct Debit to "pay the amount"

My billing is all managed online. For example a few months in I'd been overpaying. Instead of taking a refund, I had the option to adjust the direct debit to a figure suggested by BG, which takes into account usage and attempts to leave me neither in credit or debit at the end of the plan.

Within 2 months I ended up £50 in debit because that figure BG provided was clearly far too low. I then adjusted again based on the newly provided figures from BG and now I'm £100 in debit :rotfl:

The only bonus being of course that I don't have to provide meter readings. Based on my experience they should be called "Convenient" meters rather than "Smart". Although the inconvenience of having to monitor my account balance somewhat nullifies the benefit. Better than getting stung out of the blue much later down the line I suppose.

matelodave

You don't have to use the energy companies estimate. Use your own and the direct debit will be based on that.

I tell the energy compnay approximately how much energy that I expect to use (based on eight years worth of info) and they base the direct debit on that.

I know my energy consumption profile and depending on when I start my contract I'll be in debt for some time and in credit for some time but by the end of the contract it should balance out to within around £20 either way.

My present contact started at the end of November and I pay £76 a month. By April I was £166 in debt. It's now down to £73.18 and my current projection is that I'll be around £5.65 in credit at the end of my contract.

It's not difficult to do your own sums based on what you use and what you spend. It just needs you to read the meters once a month and work it out for your self. You can then see whether your DD will balance out and can adjust it if it won't - that way you'll get no surprises. You can also avoid your DD bouncing up and down like a yo-yo.

Nick_C

I've also told the energy suppliers how much I want to pay and never had a problem with that.

I prefer to slightly overpay as a contingency.

I'm currently with Ovo, who give me a discount each month based on the credit balance and a notional interest rate of 3pc. I also get 1pc cashback from Santander on the monthly overpayments.

I withdraw the surplus roughly once a year.

House_Martin

Personally I don` t mind at all in allowing my supplier to have a credit in their coffers getting a dirisory interest rate instead of my bank. I like to enter the colder months with around £200 in credit at least to emerge in April roughly zero.
We get a very good discount for a fixed tariff yearly deal over the suckers on standard variable and the suppliers deserve a bit of payback keeping a small wedge of mine for a while.
I m not a greedy person and like to be fair with my suppliers because they give me not far off the cheapest rates in the UK so they are welcome to be a small banker for me with zero interest rates.
I can only get 1.5% at the best. Hopefully when that idiot Canadian in charge of the interests rates who is up to his dirty tricks trying to derail Brexit departs back to where he came from we can get some better rates which does nt devalue my savings every year like it has the last 10 years