£400 Energy payment

Dez_from_Leicester

Hi,
With this being paid from Oct, rightly or wrongly, I can see people cancelling their Direct Debits & spending the money on a good Xmas & worry about the bills next year.

GingerTim

Except it's paid as a credit to your electricity bill not as cash, most likely in 6 x £66 instalments. With prices going up in October the likelihood of people having massive credit balances to withdraw seems unlikely, to say the least.

Mstty

The suggestion is it will be 6 monthly payments of £66.66.

If people cancel their direct debits they generally lose the discount for paying that way and some fixed rates demand this payment or they get moved to a higher rate.

However yes some people may do this.

grandadgolfer

Dez_from_Leicester said:

Hi,
With this being paid from Oct, rightly or wrongly, I can see people cancelling their Direct Debits & spending the money on a good Xmas & worry about the bills next year.

The same as when housing benefit was paid direct to claimants rather than landlords and surprise surprise lots of people got into big arrears

Mobtr

grandadgolfer said:

Dez_from_Leicester said:

Hi,
With this being paid from Oct, rightly or wrongly, I can see people cancelling their Direct Debits & spending the money on a good Xmas & worry about the bills next year.

The same as when housing benefit was paid direct to claimants rather than landlords and surprise surprise lots of people got into big arrears

Whoever thought that was a good idea needs shooting. Did they really think irresponsible people were going to hand the money over to their landlords? It’s getting even worse for landlords now as everything seems to be geared up on the side of the tenant 

Northern_Wanderer

And even worse when the claimants were falsly claiming and gov went after the landlords to get the rental money back!

Northern_Wanderer

Hopefully it will be in installments, that would be sensible. There will always be people who bury their head in the sand and not worry about their bills.

We had supplier defaults, I suppose next winter it will be customer defaults that's going to get added to our future bills.

GingerTim

Northern_Wanderer said:

Hopefully it will be in installments, that would be sensible. There will always be people who bury their head in the sand and not worry about their bills.

We had supplier defaults, I suppose next winter it will be customer defaults that's going to get added to our future bills.

It's not going to be paid as cash, but as a credit on every electricity bill - most likely in 6 x £66 instalments. With prices going up again in October, the likelihood of people having massive credit balances to withdraw seems unlikely, to say the least.

pochase

Hopefully suppliers will not allow customers to withdraw credit that they have made during summer before the new prices kick in.

Just when I read here a lot of people who get their debit order reduced "because it does not sound right, or is to expensive" I am really concerned about next spring when the DDs are reviewed and debts need to be recovered through higher direct debits.

SJMALBA

Perhaps of greater importance if it was to be a lump sum rather than 6 monthly payments, but what about those who pay by variable DD, and as such, would not ordinarily have any credit balance - will they be able to withdraw the credit?

GingerTim

SJMALBA said:

Perhaps of greater importance if it was to be a lump sum rather than 6 monthly payments, but what about those who pay by variable DD, and as such, would not ordinarily have any credit balance - will they be able to withdraw the credit?

Who knows? If I were a betting man I'd suggest as it's not 'real' money but a credit, then it won't be withdrawable.

For instance, my variable direct debit for electricity is about £32 per month, so I just I expect the credits to sit on my account until they're exhausted.