Overpaying energy bills

Wackford

Is there any merit in withdrawing a big lump sum from a deposit account to make a one-off overpayment on your energy bill account?
 In theory this should mean  buying future very expensive gas at today's slightly-less-exorbitant prices - but I suspect there are drawbacks I haven't thought of. 
 View welcome

mr_stripey

I think you will still be charged whatever the prevailing rate for gas/electric is at the time. So you won't save anything, you'll just have a large credit balance to be chipped away at over time.

lohr500

Unfortunately I don't think it works like that. The lump sum will just sit in your energy bill account and get drawn down as the monthly or quarterly bills are generated at the unit rates/s that are in place at the time. Better left on deposit in your own a/c earning interest.

The only exception I believe is on prepayment meters/cards, where there was some advice about topping up the meter in advance of price increases. But I seem to recall reading somewhere that even this didn't go to plan for some customers.

MWT

Wackford said:

 In theory this should mean  buying future very expensive gas at today's slightly-less-exorbitant prices - but I suspect there are drawbacks I haven't thought of.

You are not buying energy with your payment to the supplier, merely putting funds on deposit to be used at a future point and at the prevailing prices at that time.

If that leads you to think about inflating your meter readings, do consider that this is considered fraud, and not a good idea at all.

CanNeverThinkOfAUsername

I know someone who did input a massively wrong elec meter reading a year ago, thinking it was fine, and he was buying £1000 worth of energy at 'current' prices and he would submit the wrong reading every month and just pay standing charges. But then the company started to look into it and sent meter readers out, and then said company went bust, his SOLR was wrong, and it was a nightmare to sort out. He didn't think it was fraud, but it very much was! (He regrets that now)

[Deleted User]

Wackford said:

Is there any merit in withdrawing a big lump sum from a deposit account to make a one-off overpayment on your energy bill account?
 In theory this should mean  buying future very expensive gas at today's slightly-less-exorbitant prices - but I suspect there are drawbacks I haven't thought of. 
 View welcome

All meter readings are industry-validated before they are used for billing purposes. It follows that an inflated reading should be rejected. This process was brought in many years ago because people can misread their meters.

Wackford

Thanks for replies.

EssexHebridean

CanNeverThinkOfAUsername said:

I know someone who did input a massively wrong elec meter reading a year ago, thinking it was fine, and he was buying £1000 worth of energy at 'current' prices and he would submit the wrong reading every month and just pay standing charges. But then the company started to look into it and sent meter readers out, and then said company went bust, his SOLR was wrong, and it was a nightmare to sort out. He didn't think it was fraud, but it very much was! (He regrets that now)

A salient lesson - and of course that is before any investigation into the situation is concluded. he might yet end up regretting it even more!