Octopus have adjusted my direct debit

oliverbrown

Octopus have significantly reduced my direct debit which I wasn't expecting. Has anyone else seen any changes?

MWT

Yes, this is the reduction for the £66/month share of the Government £400 rebate....

https://octopus.energy/blog/energy-crisis-support/#400energybillspayment

oliverbrown

Right, I suppose that rebate has not reflected into the recommended amount yet.

MWT

oliverbrown said:

Right, I suppose that rebate has not reflected into the recommended amount yet.

Not sure it will be, they just reduce your DD due to the additional amount being credited to your account from the Government payment...

oliverbrown

The fly in the ointment is that the new direct debit amount is assuming I'm still going to be paying the pre-October prices, which I am not.

bristolleedsfan

oliverbrown said:

The fly in the ointment is that the new direct debit amount is assuming I'm still going to be paying the pre-October prices, which I am not.

Likely that many on flexible tariff will get payment increase suggestion emails in couple or so weeks time.

oliverbrown

bristolleedsfan said:

oliverbrown said:

The fly in the ointment is that the new direct debit amount is assuming I'm still going to be paying the pre-October prices, which I am not.

Likely that many on flexible tariff will get payment increase suggestion emails in couple or so weeks time.

Possibly. To be fair this was not notified by e-mail, I just happened to log in. Maybe it will change again in a day or two.

badmemory

You need to remember that energy companies are not generally competent which is why you need to figure out for yourself what your costs actually are/are going to be & ensure that what THEY say is sufficient & not also way too much. 

I do hope they are now teaching this stuff in schools because if not they need to be.  Even if it just so the kids can come home & teach their parents.  I was really shocked last week to discover that my highly intelligent sister had no idea if her energy bills since her supplier went kaput last year were right or not.  I do think that the remaining suppliers are deliberately making their bills more complicated.  For some reason bg cancelled one bill at the end of the year & reissued for the longer period & then in June cancelled all the bills from Sept (when they took over) onwards & reissued as one bill.  No changes to the rates or the readings no explanation for it so just because they could.  It's bad enough that they only seem capable of billing every 3 months (if then) but they seem to be on a mission to confuse.

caeler

I’m with octopus and my direct debit has been reduced too. 

[Deleted User]

badmemory said:

You need to remember that energy companies are not generally competent which is why you need to figure out for yourself what your costs actually are/are going to be & ensure that what THEY say is sufficient & not also way too much. 

I do hope they are now teaching this stuff in schools because if not they need to be.  Even if it just so the kids can come home & teach their parents.  I was really shocked last week to discover that my highly intelligent sister had no idea if her energy bills since her supplier went kaput last year were right or not.  I do think that the remaining suppliers are deliberately making their bills more complicated.  For some reason bg cancelled one bill at the end of the year & reissued for the longer period & then in June cancelled all the bills from Sept (when they took over) onwards & reissued as one bill.  No changes to the rates or the readings no explanation for it so just because they could.  It's bad enough that they only seem capable of billing every 3 months (if then) but they seem to be on a mission to confuse.

I think you've got that the wrong way around.  They are generally competent, but when the systems are stressed (such as 20 companies suddenly becoming 6) this can go wrong, particularly when the customer base is uninformed and not engaged.  They're not "deliberately making their bills more complicated".  Why does everyone jump to malicious intent?

You're spot on with the problem of seemingly intelligent and sensible people having no idea about what is a relatively large expense though (and seeming to be happy with that situation).  Even here, which represents a set of people more engaged and interested than the general public, we still get the same questions repeated frequently and comments like "I don't understand what a unit is".

MWT

badmemory said:

For some reason bg cancelled one bill at the end of the year & reissued for the longer period & then in June cancelled all the bills from Sept (when they took over) onwards & reissued as one bill.  No changes to the rates or the readings no explanation for it so just because they could.  It's bad enough that they only seem capable of billing every 3 months (if then) but they seem to be on a mission to confuse.

BG decided to start billing all the customers they gained though the SoLR scheme well before they actually got the correct meter readings for the day they became responsible for their supply and before they had actually updated the central database with their supplier ID.

As a consequence, when they did eventually get the correct meter readings they then had to reverse out all the estimated billing and replace it with the correct billing using the correct meter reading and start date.

Needless to say, this has caused a lot of confusion.

Other suppliers opted to wait for the meter readings and the supplier ID update before they started billing, which also caused issues as some people didn't set money aside and got into debt or got worried that they were not receiving bills...

Neither route was perfect, but the BG one seems to have caused the most confusion.