Debit increase to match forecast - not reality

Travelmoons

Given the good weather my last 3 months gas/electric have been minimal so I claimed back £200 credit
Then I’m told I’m in debt (usage has decreased) Told to pay £200 a month DD! (My usage trend is down!)

Seems to me they are stating, being in debt on their future (winter) forecast 
At best this is a con, at worst, surely this is fraud?
(demanding money for bills that might happen in 3 - 6 months?)
I don’t want to pay that far in advance!

Alnat1

Ask to change to variable DD where you can give a monthly reading and they will bill you for what you have used.

Works well so long as you can budget and have enough money put by to cover what might be huge winter bills.

Ultrasonic

Travelmoons said:

Given the good weather my last 3 months gas/electric have been minimal so I claimed back £200 credit
Then I’m told I’m in debt (usage has decreased) Told to pay £200 a month DD! (My usage trend is down!)

Seems to me they are stating, being in debt on their future (winter) forecast 
At best this is a con, at worst, surely this is fraud?
(demanding money for bills that might happen in 3 - 6 months?)
I don’t want to pay that far in advance!

What was your previous DD amount? I'd be pretty confident you haven't saved £200 in energy use over the last three months vs last year so your supplier's response of predicting at least some increase in DD payments probably isn't unreasonable. 

As above you probably have the option of switching to be charged for exactly what you use every month but be aware you'd have to be ready and able to pay much larger bills in winter than summer if you did. What is happening right now is your energy supplier is estimating how to spread costs evenly across the year to try to make it easier for you to budget. Note also that if you aren't on a fixed tariff there is going to be a big increase in energy costs in October.

Robin9

@Travelmoons   Is this any different to the traditional DD arrangement -  pay more in the summer to build up a credit ready for the winter.

I'm with @Alnat1 - recently switched to variable DD. My June bill was £6.68  but I expect  a winter month will be in excess of £350

pochase

Robin9 said:

@Travelmoons   Is this any different to the traditional DD arrangement -  pay more in the summer to build up a credit ready for the winter.

I'm with @Alnat1 - recently switched to variable DD. My June bill was £6.68  but I expect  a winter month will be in excess of £350

I assume you used up all your remaining credit for the bill to be this low.

I am also on variable direct debit, mainly to force EDF to do a monthly bill. The only real drawback is really that you need to be aware that the winter bills will be huge compared to summer, and that you either need to have enough spare cash to not care, or you need to budget for the upcoming bills.

Another issue might be that energy suppliers might be fast with debt collection if you did not set the money aside and are unable to pay the big winter bills. 

What_time_is_it

My supplier estimated that I used 11,000 kwh of gas in the 42 days between 1st April and 12th May. My previous meter readings had shown them that I had actually used around 9,000 between 3rd November and 31st March.

Absolutely insane guessing! In reality we hardly used any gas at all in April and May as it was quite mild. Why they thought I'd crank up the heating and use more gas then than I had over the whole of the winter is a total mystery!!

Honestly, though, I don't really care. I'll provide accurate readings at the end of each SVR change period. So for April-September I'll probably only use around 1,000-1,500 kwhs and they will have to adjust their bill accordingly.

My direct debit is still quite low and I'm building a "debt" that doesn't exist as it's just their error.

Mstty

@Ultrasonic

£200 overpay Apr/May and Jun is quite plausible. Our DD is set to £177.70. 

As can be seen in the spreadsheet below £225.79 credit added to our account.

Ultrasonic

Mstty said:

@Ultrasonic

£200 overpay Apr/May and Jun is quite plausible. Our DD is set to £177.70. 

Fair point - the current hot weather was making me think 3 months ago wouldn't take us into a period where anyone may have used heating in previous years but you're right it could .