bristol energy

terry_and_sue

although i am on a fixed tarrif untill august 2022 bristol energy have informed me that my direct debit will increase by aprox £25 a month  from jan 2022 
although i am in credit by nearly £200  ime at a loss as what to do  help !!!!!!

QrizB

There was another poster with a similar question about Bristol Energy recently:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/78821335/#Comment_78821335

Together Energy (who are behind Bristol Energy) owe Ofgem £12.4M so they need to raise the money from somewhere, before the 27th of January. There is a message about this on both companies' websites (example) which I think is meant to be reassuring but really isn't.

Xbigman

But what are you paying now? If you're paying £200 a month then you're only a month in credit and £25 heading into winter is reasonable. If your paying £50 a month it looks a pretty big increase. Without some comparative figures your post is meaningless. 


Darren

Xbigman

Well my email arrived this morning.

I'll work in yearly figures.

Current payments are £480 a year.
BE have calculated my usage as £540.
My actual usage was £516.81. 
I am £120 in credit (Nov bill).  
They want to increase my payments to £624  (£40pm to £52pm)

I've been letting the credit run down slightly as it was nearly £160 this time last year. 
Their usage (£) estimate is a little high but not ridiculous and matches their figures for my yearly energy (Kwh) usage which also looked a bit high. 

So, to their email. They have given the method of calculating my new payment as the usage from 6th Nov 2020 to 5th Nov 2021 plus they have added the estimated usage since my last bill (about 6 weeks). Or put another way, they have used 58 weeks usage to work out my next 52 weeks of payments. This makes no real sense but that's what they say they've done, and it works out to about the figure they've come up with. 
Looking back my payments didn't change last year but they did change in Nov 2019 so it is about this time of year that they review payments. 
So is this some smash and grab to raise money - I don't think so. It looks like their usual not very clever methodology for working out monthly payments. But what do I know...


Darren