Is Cancelling Your DD AN Option

Imperial1847

I've stated my usage etc in another thread and I am making plans to reduce it, would there be any sense in stopping my direct debit (it will be £374.00 in Sept then £475.00 thereafter) and just giving meter readings and paying for what I use monthly, I am £495 in debit currently.

[Deleted User]

If you are in £495 in debit, then I would clear the debit first before making any decisions about cancelling anything. What you are paying now is clearly too low. 

Have you sat down and calculated what your likely cost will be for the next 12 months? Pay as You Go sounds great until you get hit with a hefty bill in January.

pochase

Not sure who is your supplier, but for example EDF will debit all your debt in the first debit order they take. They have asked me on the day I changed to whole month direct debit for meter readings and the direct debit cleared my account to 0.

By the way, your title is misleading, you are not cancelling your direct debit, you are changing from fixed to variable direct debit keeping the direct debit discount.

With your usage you are likely to see very high bills in winter, don't forget to put the money for this aside.

Brie

I have in the past occasionally paid a hefty lump sum in order to keep my monthly DDs relatively low. 

I would be happy to pay a big DD for the winter months (i.e. £300) and a small one for the summer (i.e £100) but don't want to go for an actual variable.  I wonder if any companies will consider 2 DD levels like in my example - one for winter and one for summer?

Astria

Brie said:

I have in the past occasionally paid a hefty lump sum in order to keep my monthly DDs relatively low. 

I would be happy to pay a big DD for the winter months (i.e. £300) and a small one for the summer (i.e £100) but don't want to go for an actual variable.  I wonder if any companies will consider 2 DD levels like in my example - one for winter and one for summer?

Probably not, but why not just it yourself? Open a bank account with any bank, setup an SO to it for the payment you are willing to make during summer and winter, and then tell your energy company to take their variable DDs from that account. It's practically the same thing. The only difference is that if you go into debt you may be charged interest on that debt (eg. use of an overdraft), but if you go into credit you may be paid interest.

MWT

Brie said:

I have in the past occasionally paid a hefty lump sum in order to keep my monthly DDs relatively low. 

I would be happy to pay a big DD for the winter months (i.e. £300) and a small one for the summer (i.e £100) but don't want to go for an actual variable.  I wonder if any companies will consider 2 DD levels like in my example - one for winter and one for summer?

It has been done by a few suppliers, but mostly the ones that went bust last year...

I'm not aware of any doing it now.

Mstty

Personally I would suggest reducing energy consumption (which I think you have started) and continue overpaying until your debit is cleared (possibly only two months if you really knuckle down and are paying £374 a month). Then you could consider moving to variable whole bill DD with the added benefit of £66.66x going into your account from the Government for 6 months starting October.