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

[Deleted User]

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this link:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11142111/Energy-customers-warned-refuse-pay-bills-firms-pre-payment-meters.html

born_again

jimjames said:

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.

Bulb Standing charge

27.2192p per day
Which would only be £8.46 for a 31 day month.

Not with bulb. But like you our gas (eon) is next to nothing at this time of year a Total of £18 in the last month, inc standing charge.

BobT36

Credit is YOUR money, not theirs. You are LENDING it to them to cover future costs. They have no right to say you can only use so much etc etc. I'd demand the full lot back immediately and move onto variable. 

lindatoo

I am also a low user. I live on my own and I am very careful with how I use my electricity. Last winter my highest bill was £35. I tend to average around £1 day. 6 months ago my direct debit was increased to just under £60 even though I am on a fixed tariff and have been since Nov 21 and it doesn't end until Nov 23, so naturally I accumulated quite a bit of credit. Last month they refunded me most of the credit and decreased my direct debit to £27, which is a little low considering my usage. Here's the rub I use a low to medium amount of gas which is with a separate provider and no longer on a fixed tariff so will be subject to the price increases. My £400 government payment will to my electricity supplier. Now bearing in mind they will be getting £67 a month for a bill thats going to be about £35. so every month I'm going to be another £40 in credit, as they will continue to take my direct debit after the government payments have stopped. so I'm likely to be about £180 in credit until Nov 23. The money is meant to help with my bills this year and I want it for my bills this year. To be fair it will barely touch the sides of my gas bill but every little helps and why should they have my money for over a year?

[Deleted User]

You don't use much electricity, but you want the government help for electricity bills to apply to your gas instead?

Clueless56

Your gas usage must be incredibly low if you believe you should only be paying £11 p/m.  I'm with Bulb and the standing charge is 25.9230 per day or £94.62 per year or c£8 per month for gas.  Since the gas is charged at 7.1230 per KWh and VAT is charged at 5% on the bill, I am wondering how many KWh you are using each month.  Bulb has calculated my annual gas charge at £571, so just a little above what you have been quoted, and I used 248.7 kWh last month; the total bill came to £ 27.04.

Do you submit readings each month to ensure they are not estimating your bills?  Could you post the detail from your last bill to help work out what could be happening?  I'm wondering if there could be a different standard charge/KWh rate for single fuel customers perhaps.

Spoonie_Turtle

[Deleted User] said:

You don't use much electricity, but you want the government help for electricity bills to apply to your gas instead?

It's energy help (Energy Bill Support Scheme) just administered on the basis of domestic electricity supplies because that's simplest and covers the widest range of people - 99%. 

[They're still working out how to get the £400 to the 1% who don't have a domestic electricity account with a supplier.]

doesntnotcompute

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Deleted_User said:

You don't use much electricity, but you want the government help for electricity bills to apply to your gas instead?

It's energy help (Energy Bill Support Scheme) just administered on the basis of domestic electricity supplies because that's simplest and covers the widest range of people - 99%. 

[They're still working out how to get the £400 to the 1% who don't have a domestic electricity account with a supplier.]

The prepayment vouchers will very likely operate like the Warm Home Discount I think, where the supplier has to make at least 2 attempts to credit the customer. The WHD guidance specifically states that suppliers can't just reissue vouchers if they haven't been cashed - they can engage with the customer and credit a DD account if the customer has one or in exceptional cases issue cheques, bank transfers or vouchers for cash.

EssexHebridean

lindatoo said:

I am also a low user. I live on my own and I am very careful with how I use my electricity. Last winter my highest bill was £35. I tend to average around £1 day. 6 months ago my direct debit was increased to just under £60 even though I am on a fixed tariff and have been since Nov 21 and it doesn't end until Nov 23, so naturally I accumulated quite a bit of credit. Last month they refunded me most of the credit and decreased my direct debit to £27, which is a little low considering my usage. Here's the rub I use a low to medium amount of gas which is with a separate provider and no longer on a fixed tariff so will be subject to the price increases. My £400 government payment will to my electricity supplier. Now bearing in mind they will be getting £67 a month for a bill thats going to be about £35. so every month I'm going to be another £40 in credit, as they will continue to take my direct debit after the government payments have stopped. so I'm likely to be about £180 in credit until Nov 23. The money is meant to help with my bills this year and I want it for my bills this year. To be fair it will barely touch the sides of my gas bill but every little helps and why should they have my money for over a year?

Can you not just divert your regular DD amount for your electricity to your gas account for those 6 months, along with any proportion of the grant that gets refunded to you? I'd have thought that was the most straightforward way of doing it - unless of course you are with Utility Warehouse who aren't capable of applying manual payments to customer's accounts.