Should quoting costs to customers as a monthly direct debit amount be stopped?

tempus_fugit

BUFF said:

Chrysalis said:

  In an ideal world fixed DD would suffer a death 

I disagree with this as I probably use 70% of my gas over 3 months in the Winter & it suits me to average the payment over 12.
I also suspect that those people who are budgeting/spending close to their limits on a day by day basis are probably the ones who would be worst hit by having to pay for their increased heating cost at the time incurred rather than spreading the load over a longer period.

I agree, don't take it away just because some people won't make the effort to understand how it works. I find it straightforward and useful to work out my annual usage and just divide it by 12 so that I know the monthly cost on average. As a retired person (currently) on a low income I need to have a flat rate from month to month as it helps with the monthly budgeting. If that doesn't suit others then they have the right to do it differently.

tempus_fugit

badmemory said:

I think it is time they stopped charging gas per kw & just charged per unit.  I have found it interesting that recently as gas has been going up the number of kw per units has gone up, not down like you would expect, in fact I don't remember it ever having been so high.  British Gas has just done 39.8 for the whole 3.5 months of my recent bill.  The highest I can remember it for the last almost 10 years is 39.6 with it normally being nearer 39.3.

As for Ofgem, how much would it save us all if we didn't have to pay for that useless quango.

They can't do that because gas is metered by volume, not the energy content (which would be much harder if not impossible). It would be unfair to charge by volume because if you are getting a lower calorific value then you need to use more gas to heat your home.

tempus_fugit

Mstty said:

You can educate though and this is something the regulator could enforce suppliers to do.

Unfortunately a lot of people don't want to be educated. They are proud of the fact that they don't look at these things more analytically and they think people like me are boring for banging on about it. Their loss.

badmemory

I think we need to face the fact that most people did not pass GCSE Maths & energy bills are not exactly straight forward on a good day.  And lets face it most of them do not turn up on a good day.  For instance my last one which should have covered from mid January to 31st March, for some obscure & obviously unexplained reason covered mid December to 31st March in the process cancelling the one from mid Dec to mid Jan & then reprinting it again on the new bill with no changes.  Surely there can only be one reason for that & that would be to attempt to confuse, otherwise why bother.

This also doesn't take into account the sudden increase in my expected annual usage.  They seem to have gone back to my pre-2018 usage before I replaced most of my "stuff" with things that used less power and the difference is significant.  I'm down to about three quarters which believe me on my bill is definitely significant.  Do they think I won't notice or just hope I don't?

I do have a spreadsheet but they avoid making that easy.  I used to be with Peoples Energy.  Enter your readings on whatever date you choose, go to the spreadsheet & put the figures in that & see what the bill should be.  Go to their website an hour after entering readings & print off the bill.

British Gas what a joke, put readings in regularly - nothing.  Put readings in 21st March preparing for 1st April - nothing.  Put readings in 29th March because you know that the website is going to crash before 1st because it is slow even in the middle of the night.  Go in on the 30th because you can live in hopes they may have produced a bill & it is asking for readings today 30th, but I put them in yesterday so I assume they've lost them.  I finally got readings in on 31st by phone.  I even got an email saying my bill was ready & to go to my account - I could swear here but I won't - their system was STILL down!!

At least I am retired & have a lot of my day that I CAN devote to sorting this stuff, how people cope with all this rubbish whilst bringing up children & working I have no idea.

Ultrasonic

MattMattMattUK said:

Mstty said:

You can educate though and this is something the regulator could enforce suppliers to do.

To be able to educate someone they need to be both willing and capable of understanding.

Whilst true I think the proportion of people not capable of understanding how energy bills work is small. I think choosing to learn and finding a suitable source of information are bigger issues.

Ultrasonic

MattMattMattUK said:

Mstty said:

You can educate though and this is something the regulator could enforce suppliers to do.

To be able to educate someone they need to be both willing and capable of understanding.

Whilst true I think the proportion of people not capable of understanding how energy bills work is small. I think choosing to learn and finding a suitable source of information are bigger issues.

Sea_Shell

Some people seem unable to budget and plan for Christmas every year, and still fall into the Dec-Jan "pay trap".  So can't see them putting money aside for their winter fuel bill either.

Unfortunately some people just aren't interested and go into "la la la, not listening" mode when you try and explain, despite being well educated.

Also there is an element of needing all their money NOW, not credit on account for use in 6 month time!

molerat

OFGEM needs to get off its fat backside and enforce some basic rules.

Monthly billing

Accurate 1/12th EAC DDs with a clear explanation for it not being so ie paying back debt over x months

Clear understandable billing - something that seems to have drifted over the years

Monthly budget DD is not in itself a problem and is a welcome help to a large majority of the population who have been outlined in earlier posts.  What is a problem is outlandish DDs based on fairy tale consumption figures with no logical explanation of where those figures came from.

OFGEM needs to regulate rather than its current preferred easy option of being seen to regulate.