Bulb will only let me use £9.37 of my col payments per month during the winter Help!

Lexii

Hi, I'm writing this absolutely livid (after just having the phone put down on me by bulb) please bare with me because both issues are interlinked.

We seem to be having nothing but problems with bulb since they entered  administration. Incorrect estimates, refusing to change payments to reasonable prices for our usage, incorrect advice, refusing to amend errors or explain them ect.

First things first, my mum and i live together just the two of us, we have a key meter for our electricity and pay gas by direct debit. So this issue is only about our gas.

Over the past few months we have been preparing for the harsh winter and upped our payments from £2 (yes thats right we were in so much credit they told us to pay £2 per month) to £17 to £30 per month direct debit, we did this to get some credit behind us for the winter. And have made changes in the way we use gas and electric, timer plugs, a grade appliances and even turned off the boiler to save on gas (we realised every appliance was cold fill so didn't need the hot water)

Now over the past 4 months or so bulb has been hounding us to up our direct debit agin and again to £45 which they are adamant we are using each and every month. We refused because honestly we can't afford it at the moment and our bills haven't been more then £11 so when paying £30 we have still added around £20 per month to our credit.

Today my mum got an email stating they were upping her DD to £36 and there was nothing she could do about it.

We went onto the bulb app to see the reason for the price increase and they blamed two things.

1. Our usage being £45 per month

2. They will only let us use £9.37 of our credit per month in the colder months.

1.  The first reason reason was that they think we are using more then what we pay for each month. (Which makes no sense when we are adding credit each month) They are saying that our monthly usage is £45 per month. But my bill hasn't been anywhere near that since april. So they are using the last cold months bill as my actual summer usage estimate when my summer bills have been between £7 and £11. I dont want to up my DD just yet i want to wait until October for the new prices and see how much my bills are.

Where do i stand on this? We are £170 in credit at the moment and do not use £45 worth of gas. I understand that the prices have gone up and will go up but im infuriated that they are trying to up the price based on six month old estimate and refuse to offer us an explanation. I asked over the phone but was told they can see our usage and our bills but cant do anything other then move us to a variable direct debit and they will change the prices based on their estimated usage monthly.


2.We were under the impression that we can use our col payments (£350 and £400) and accrued credit for our gas during the winter. But have realised that bulb are trying to cap the amount of our credit we can use each month? They are stating that we have to up our DD because they will only allow us to use £9.37 of our credit per month during the cold months. Can they do this? 

I'm concerned because this would mean that even though the gov are topping up my credit with the col payments. Bulb will not let me use it. Instead bulb will only let me use £9.37 of credit per month and then i would have to pay the rest.

Can anyone help me? I opened a complaint with them via email but im not sure if they will sort this out.

All i want is to continue to pay my £30 until i get a few bills under the new prices and up my payments then. I also want to be able to use my credit and the col payments during the cold months as me and the gov both intended.

QrizB

Welcome to the forum.

A few questions before we can start digging into things:

What is your current tariff, including the unto price and daily standing charge, for each fuel?

How much electricity and gas do you use in a year? (If you don't know this, tell us your current meter readings and what they were this time last year, and we can work it out for you.)

Spoonie_Turtle

The £400 goes onto electricity accounts.  For you it will be in the form of a voucher to put onto your key.

This then frees up £66 per month that you would have been using on electricity to be able to use for other things.  So you could in theory pay the £66 into your gas account for 6 months (if Bulb allow you to make separate non-DD payments).

The £350 you mention, what is that from?  Cost of Living payments can be used for energy (you using it to make payments) but it can also be used to cover the rising cost of food, transport, other bills, etc.

pochase

The £400 will be paid towards your electricity account as vouchers for your prepaid meter, so the £400 cannot be used for your gas account.

The_Fat_Controller

@gj373 surely the COL payments will be vouchers or credit for their ELECTRICITY account only.

They have a Key Meter for electricity so Bulb may not be taking that into account when setting the gas-only DD.

I may be wrong, but it is an unusual supply situation.

gj373

The_Fat_Controller said:

@gj373 surely the COL payments will be vouchers or credit for their ELECTRICITY account only.

They have a Key Meter for electricity so Bulb may not be taking that into account when setting the gas-only DD.

I may be wrong, but it is an unusual supply situation.

You are of course correct, I totally misread so removed my reply :-)

Lexii

Spoonie_Turtle said:

The £400 goes onto electricity accounts.  For you it will be in the form of a voucher to put onto your key.

This then frees up £66 per month that you would have been using on electricity to be able to use for other things.  So you could in theory pay the £66 into your gas account for 6 months (if Bulb allow you to make separate non-DD payments).

The £350 you mention, what is that from?  Cost of Living payments can be used for energy (you using it to make payments) but it can also be used to cover the rising cost of food, transport, other bills, etc.

The £320 sorry is the second col payment we were going to put on the gas to help. Its more that im infuriated that they are not going to let me use my credit. They have stated they will let me use £9.37 per month. 

I have to say that the £400 on my electric is gutting and I'm now terrified because i dont even use £30 a month electricity. so theoretically I'm only going to have maximum £30 extra to to pop on gas. And its the gas we really needed it for because thats our heating. I will still put the second col payment on the gas.

Our gas usage was estimated by bulb at £540 a year.

Spoonie_Turtle

Are you with Bulb for electricity as well, or another supplier?

The thought was that people who didn't need the credit for pre-pay electricity would most likely also have pre-pay gas meters, so the vouchers could be used on whichever one they wanted.  I don't know if you can get refunds of credit off the key at all or not.

wild666

Whichever CS rep said this about only using £9.37 of any credit is total BS! When I was with Bulb I could have reduced my DD from £67 to just £11 per month but I didn't and got £900 back when I left them. Any credit on an account can be used up as the customer sees fit whether it's by reducing payments or dropping them to as low as £1 per month until such a time that the credit is nearly used and an increase in the DD or monthly payment is required.

deano2099

Yeah saying you can only use part of your credit seems complete nonsense. I would get back in touch and double check this with them, but if they double down say fine, £9.37 x 6 months is £56.22, so they need to refund you the remaining £113.78 immediately, then you can use this towards the increase in direct debit. There's no reason for them to be holding onto that money if they're not going to use it for your bills.

(I'd also note the variable direct debit is an option and as long as you're on top of providing regular meter readings you should be billed based on actual usage, not estimates)

jimjames

These numbers seem incredibly low. The standing charges alone will be a big proportion of those amounts and if there are 2 of you in the house then at least some usage so are you dealing with actual reads not estimates? Our gas bill based on actual reads was around £20 last month and we have virtually no use over the summer so was around 8 units.