nPower 12 October 2018 at 10:29AM edited 30 November -1 at 1:00AM in Energy 7 replies 616 views

Carol39

I am on Go Green Energy Fixed until December 2019 and have recently been informed that my monthly DD will go from £76.00 per month to £120! I queried this as my usage has not changed and managed to reduce it to £106 but will now be in debit each month. I didn't understand the reasons why they can put the price up - anyone got any idea and is this legal?

giraffe69

Do you give them regular readings or are they basing the DD on estimated bills? Very much worth your while to make sure readings are given and online is the easiest way to do it.
Yes BTW it is legal and the reason is that they believe your energy use is higher than your current DD allows. They may, of course, be wrong.

System

Carol39 wrote: »

I am on Go Green Energy Fixed until December 2019 and have recently been informed that my monthly DD will go from £76.00 per month to £120! I queried this as my usage has not changed and managed to reduce it to £106 but will now be in debit each month. I didn't understand the reasons why they can put the price up - anyone got any idea and is this legal?

There is no question of the cost of your tariff increasing. Monthly DD payments are nothing more than money paid on account from which charges are deducted. You will only pay for the energy that you use at the agreed tariff rate. The most likely reason for your ‘increase’ is that the supplier has over estimated your usage. Have you been giving the supplier regular meter readings?

scaredofdebt

Something is clearly wrong there as if I put details into USwitch for that tariff (£76 a month) the Super Fix September 2021 with Npower is practically the same monthly payment.

So it looks like either they underestimated your usage when they came up with your £76 payment originally or they're overestimating going forward. Or your usage has gone up etc.

Is there a balance on the account at the moment?

Carol39

My usage is the same and I am £17.00 in debt from the first revised monthly payment. I only switched because they were slightly cheaper than my previous supplier. I send regular readings but there was some confusion with them when I initially signed up resulting in someone coming out to read them. Guess am stuck with them for a while but will certainly be switching as soon as I can. Thanks for all your comments.

B13blues

I read a lot of npower posts about confusion when starting, same happened with me. Don't trust them at all they changed my readings to suit even when one went backwards (honest). Would never go DD with npower.

The_Blacklist

[FONT=&quot]This has happened to one of my friend. The DD increased from £132 to £157, even though had credit of £137.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Is on fixed tariff until 2021. Monthly meter readings supplied.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]The reason was that this was to cover the possible future usage. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]I have suggested that a complaint to the Npower and Ofgem as this is seems to indicate that Npower can see into the future and that they can charge for unused energy.[/FONT]

matelodave

Most people will use around 65-70% of their energy between now and next March (5 months) and the other 30-35% in the seven summer months.

Which means that if you haven got a healthy credit balance of between one and two months worth of DDs by around October then you'll most likely be well in arrears by next April.

Most energy companies will put up your direct debit at this time of year if you have a low or negative balance to try and avoid this

However, if your DD was set properly against an accurate forecast then your account should zero out by the end of your fix.

If you start a fix in April or May it usually looks pretty good at this time of the year but starting in November mean that you can go straight into arrears after the first month.

If you keep your own records and can work out your consumption profile you should be able to calculate when or if your account will balance at the end of your fix - if it will balance then go back to the supplier and get then to restore the DD back to it's original value.

You need to send in regular readings - once a month and check that bills are based on the readings NOT ESTIMATES and you should monitor your monthly consumption to ensure that it is tracking your estimated consumption.

Here's what my profile looks like - I'm all electric and my forecast is 7200kwh

Month - Forecast - cost -- Actual - cost
Jan - 1200 - £137.47 -- 1089 - £124.75
Feb - 1000 - £114.56 -- 995 - £113.98
Mar - 850 - £ 97.37 -- 997 - £114.21
Apr - 500 - £ 57.28 -- 546 - £ 62.55
May - 275 - £ 31.50 -- 291 - £ 33.34
Jun - 275 - £ 31.50 -- 212 - £ 24.28
Jul - 275 - £ 31.50 -- 210 - £ 24.06
Aug - 275 - £ 31.50 -- 261 - £ 29.90
Sept - 275 - £ 31.50 -- 253 - £ 28.98
Oct - 450 - £ 51.55
Nov - 775 - £ 88.79
Dec - 1000 - £114.56

Total = 7150. Cost = £824.83 = DD of £68.74

By now my forecast suggests that I should have used 4925kwh (£564.21) whereas I've actually used 4856 (£556.30).

I've paid ten time £68.74 = £687.40 and my account is now £123.19 in credit. butI've I've still got around 2225kwh (£254.90) to go to the end of my contract.

As there only two more payments of 68.70 (£137.40) I need to have the accumulated credit of £123.19 plus £137.40 = £260.59 to pay £254.90.

I expect to be around £5.69 in credit at the end of my 12 month fix.

However you can see that by the end of April I'd used £415.49 of energy but only paid £274,96 (4 x £68.74) so my account was in arrears of £140.53 but I was confident that my account would balance by the end of December.

The calculations aren't difficult but do help you understand how the DD works and allow you to keep track of your consumption and payments and ensure that you don't get any nasty surprises