outstanding debt

yferch

My daughter has just received a bill after a whole year for over £800 in electric and gas from her supplier.  She is a single parent and does suffer with anxiety etc.  They are insisting she pays it over a period of a year at the rate of £250 a month and are insisting this is the only payment method they will accept. She cant afford this.   I said to offer them £20 extra a month on top of what she already pays which is £80 a month.  Do they really have the right to reject a valid offer of payment.  And who can we take this to.  No point in contacting the FCO they are useless. 

QrizB

If your daughter has used the energy it will have to be paid for, but your numbers don't tie up and you haven't given details of her bills.

• Which supplier is she with, and on what tariff?
• Has she been providing regular meter readings? Can you share them
  
• What meter readings were used to calculate the bill? Are they actual or estimated? What have her previous bills said?
• £250 a month for a year is £3000, not £800. What exactly are they asking for?
  

I agree that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are unlikely to be any assistance in this.

JJ_Egan

Maybe the FCO deal with the Oil tankers .

dbks

yferch said:

My daughter has just received a bill after a whole year for over £800 in electric and gas from her supplier.  She is a single parent and does suffer with anxiety etc.  They are insisting she pays it over a period of a year at the rate of £250 a month and are insisting this is the only payment method they will accept. She cant afford this.   I said to offer them £20 extra a month on top of what she already pays which is £80 a month.  Do they really have the right to reject a valid offer of payment.  And who can we take this to.  No point in contacting the FCO they are useless. 

A whole years bill you say? £800 you say?

Did she pay anyything for the year in question? The reason I ask is that an average family (you say she is just a single parent) would typically only have used about £850 of energy in a whole year in the past, if they chose a nice tariff.

Of course, if she hadn't have chosen a tariff, then she was probably supplied on a default tariff, and that would have set her back almost £1100 for the year (typically)

Anyway, suppliers tend to allow repayment of accrued debt (assuming you remain with them) over the same period that it built up. i.e. in your daughter's case a year.

So they should be prepared to accept say £67pcm on top of what she needs to pay to match her ongoing usage. If she is a typical user on a default tariff, that would cost £1277pa at today's capped price,  so about £107pcm.

Therefore she should be able to negotiate say £174pcm, depending on her ongoing usage.

But if she has managed to accrue £800 debt in a year, and has been paying a meaningful sum per month, then it sounds like she is quite a heavy user. So £250pcm could be a very fair offer in the circumstances.

I suggest she approaches someone like Citizens Advice, or the National Debt Helpline if she needs help with debt management, and also help with advice over reducing her ongoing energy consumption.

Cardew

If she has been payng £80 a month, and has run up a £800 bill in a year that means she should have been paying £147 a month over the past year.

So offering to pay an extra £20 a month(to £100) means that she would be even more in debt at the end of a year - £1,364 if prices stay the same; and they are likely to rise considerably.