More than double energy direct debit increase

Petrus57

My daughter is on a soon-to-end price cap deal. Presently, she pays £208.00 per month which, Scottish Power tells her, will shortly increase to £806.66 per month – an increase of 288%. Instead of paying £2496.00 p.a. for gas/electricity on a 4-bedroom house, she will now be paying £9679.94. She has complained to Scottish Power but has had no response.

Robin9

Lots and  lots of threads on this subject.   And wait till October

The advice is not to go for the fix offered but for the option of a variable tariff. Simply do not opt for the fix offered and she will roll onto the variable tariff.

But her present bills are huge -  what is her actual annual consumption.(in KWh) please ?

TheMilkmansDad

depending on the tariff rates for her current fix and the new offered fix the DD may be correct. is the Electric only or dual fuel?

Suggest she looks into why it's so high, is she in debt/credit? are bills accurate? meter readings submitted and used ion bills?

DE_612183

also is there any balance on her account?

pochase

We are all assuming that with a price cap deal you mean a fixed tariff?

Coming off a cheap fix to the new expensive SVT will be scary. Typical are increases of 100% to electricity and 350% to gas.

An almost 300% increase like above for both fuels is still very high. Is she maybe in debt at the moment? Also there is another increase due in October.

As already asked can you give us some more details? How many KWh gas and electrcity in the last 12 months, and if she is in debt or credit?

Many suppliers are currently trying to get overinflated direct debits, nevertheless if she was on a fix and was really using in average 208£ per months the new cost will be in the region of minimum £400 to £500, maybe more depending how the use between electricity and gas is split.

What has she complaint about to Scottish Power? That the she believes the DD is to to high? 

PRAISETHESUN

There's plenty of threads on this. Going from a cheap fixed-rate tariff to the post-April price cap levels everyone else is paying does tend to come as a bit of a shock unfortunately. And it's probably only going to get worse come Oct.

Is the DD amount based on her actual meter readings, or just estimates from SP? If the latter, then submitting meter readings on a regular basis (monthly or so) should help get the DDs down to a level that reflects her actual usage. If the former then she probably needs to start looking at ways to cut back on usage.