Utility point email doubling my DD

Plomien

I had an email this morning from Utility point advising that they were increasing my DD amount by double what I was paying. 
"To ensure that your direct debit continues to cover the cost of your future energy usage we periodically review your payment amount.

Your current usage is tracking higher than provided on your application and we would therefore recommend increasing your Direct Debit amount to £*** with effect from your next payment date. This calculation is based on our latest view of your annual consumption at your property and your latest balance.

With this in mind, we will action this recommendation in time for your next collection."

I have not made any changes in consumption and can see that from their own graph they give out.

I will admit I did have a bit of debt with them due to not adjusting my Tariff quickly enough and have just paid that off but it wasn't enough to warrant an increase of double.

I have since spoken (via webchat) to their staff and have stopped it from going ahead.

There reasons were as follows:

"The system has been reviewing 4000 accounts  and has estimated that these new figures that it's been emailing to customers is what it wants to raise their direct debits to in order to cover their annual usage and not run the risk of the customers from falling into debit on their account at all. We can leave the direct debit as it is if you would like or if you had a different figure in mind then please let me know"

Please make sure you contact them to avoid this increase unless you feel it is needed.

My thought is a small increase is fine as it will get colder so gas will increase but not to double the amount.

At this time so many people are finding it difficult as it is but to send these out to me seems crazy. When I come up for renewal I will be on the move again.

Robin9

Is UP working with Estimated readings ?   

Do you take your own readings and do your own sums ?

Plomien

I submit the readings every month

RelievedSheff

In which case you should be able to work out if your previous payments were covering your usage.

Have you built up a credit balance over the summer to cover your winter use?

Plomien

The original payments were covering my usage. I didn't have a credit balance but it didn't warrant a doubling of the DD payment

tim_p

If they were only covering your summer / autumn usage then you can pretty sure they won’t cover your winter usage.  Depending on what you were actually paying might indicate how much they should increase. As others have said you should be starting to build up a healthy credit balance as winter approaches. 

RelievedSheff

Plomien said:

The original payments were covering my usage. I didn't have a credit balance but it didn't warrant a doubling of the DD payment

If you do not have a credit balance then you do need to increase your payments to cover your winter usage.

Looking back over last years usage on our account then our three coldest winter months were double the cost of the summer months, however we had enough credit on our account to cover this so our payment stayed the same.

I don't think your supplier is doing anything wrong here. They are trying to prevent you being in debt with them come spring. You have chosen not to create a credit balance during the warmer months so should pay more for the winter months.