Brtish Gas End of Plan Balance

rdm2

Hello [1st post to MSE]

I suspect this is a common question but... Is anyone else having trouble with British Gas and particularly its end of plan balance for Electricity and Gas at the moment?  I'm not talking here about the price rises (though that's obviously part of it) but more the way they calculate your end of plan balance.

Putting this as succinctly as I can, I've been raising my fixed DD (I'm on Standard Variable Tariff) in line with what it's been telling me to do since these price rises started.   The problem is that, when I increase my DD, I then login every day for a few days after and I see the end of plan balance dropping by around two quid a day.   So for example:
Day 1: I increased my DD from £301 to £368 and it tells me instantly I'll be £155 in credit at the end of the period
Day 2: Login and with the DD still the same £368, now I'm expected to be £153 in credit at the end of the period
Day 3: Still same DD but now it's £151.
...
Day 14: Same DD and I'm now only £120 in credit at the end of the period (which is 1/3/2023 for me).

So clearly if I let this go on, and I appreciate it might not be linear, it'll be £0 end of plan balance by Day 75.   So naturally I increased my DD to £400 to compensate.   Trouble is - guess what's happened...   The end of plan credit went back up to around £155 and then started to fall again at around £2 per day.

I don't think I've changed my consumption and I don't suppose their forecast algorithm is applying price rises every day (or is it - nobody at BG call centre seems to be able to understand the point I'm making).   So in short, why when I keep increasing my DD, does the plan balance keep dropping by around £2 per day if my consumption's unchanged?   As I say, I do appreciate my consumption, especially in the forthcoming Winter months won't be linear - but surely that would mean the (seemingly daily) reductions in the end of plan balance shouldn't be uniform at £2 per day.

Sorry if this sounds like a bit of a maths lesson - that's not my intention but my aim here is to try and get an end of plan balance in a bit of credit to avoid any nasty shocks and I can't try an extreme example of setting the DD to say £600 per month to see if the same thing happens.

Cheers
Rob

PennineAcute

Work out your energy consumption yourself - dangerous leaving it to a computer.

Get your spreadsheet out and calculate an annual cost, and therefore a monthly balance.  Each month check your usage and caluclate a new annual cost, and therefore a new monthly cost.  This way you will end up with a near zero end of plan balance. 

I first wrote my speadsheet to do the above, but after a move and inheriting BG, who were setting IMO unrealistic DDs, I moved over to variable monthly DDs.  Each month they charge me what I have used in that month.   As I was in credit when I moved over to this form of payment, each month I pay my bills and if they are less than what my spreadsheet estimated my monthly direct to be, I top up the difference.  Now, I am only paying £110 a month instead of £160.  It's a bit more faffing around, but I am in control and not BG.

[Deleted User]

PennineAcute said:

Work out your energy consumption yourself - dangerous leaving it to a computer.

Get your spreadsheet out and calculate an annual cost, and therefore a monthly balance.  Each month check your usage and caluclate a new annual cost, and therefore a new monthly cost.  This way you will end up with a near zero end of plan balance. 

I first wrote my speadsheet to do the above, but after a move and inheriting BG, who were setting IMO unrealistic DDs, I moved over to variable monthly DDs.  Each month they charge me what I have used in that month.   As I was in credit when I moved over to this form of payment, each month I pay my bills and if they are less than what my spreadsheet estimated my monthly direct to be, I top up the difference.  Now, I am only paying £110 a month instead of £160.  It's a bit more faffing around, but I am in control and not BG.

Dangerous?  Really?  Because you might be a bit more in credit that you would otherwise and have to get it back in the future?  What a massive overstatement of something that isn't much of a problem.

OP - sorry, don't really know how to explain BG's system there, that's really odd.  Do you know what your actual winter usage is likely to be?  You could do some simple maths to work out how much the next six months is likely to cost and base it off that.

PennineAcute

[Deleted User] said:

PennineAcute said:

Work out your energy consumption yourself - dangerous leaving it to a computer.

Get your spreadsheet out and calculate an annual cost, and therefore a monthly balance.  Each month check your usage and caluclate a new annual cost, and therefore a new monthly cost.  This way you will end up with a near zero end of plan balance. 

I first wrote my speadsheet to do the above, but after a move and inheriting BG, who were setting IMO unrealistic DDs, I moved over to variable monthly DDs.  Each month they charge me what I have used in that month.   As I was in credit when I moved over to this form of payment, each month I pay my bills and if they are less than what my spreadsheet estimated my monthly direct to be, I top up the difference.  Now, I am only paying £110 a month instead of £160.  It's a bit more faffing around, but I am in control and not BG.

Dangerous?  Really?  Because you might be a bit more in credit that you would otherwise and have to get it back in the future?  What a massive overstatement of something that isn't much of a problem.

OP - sorry, don't really know how to explain BG's system there, that's really odd.  Do you know what your actual winter usage is likely to be?  You could do some simple maths to work out how much the next six months is likely to cost and base it off that.

Couple of things.

1)  I am sure you have read on here about people building high credit values.  This, of course, could be down to not giving monthly readings - but if not, then please tell me why my 'dangerous' is either too strong a word or exaggerated?

2)  If it is not much of a problem, then why, over the years, has this forum been inundated with posts of high credit values and problems getting it refunded?

3)  Why are you telling the OP to calculate their own values - which is exactly what I told them to do, if leaving it up to the computer is not much of a problem?

[Deleted User]

I suggested a simple calculation to give a little peace-of-mind.  You suggested a monthly iterative spreadsheet, followed by explaining how you pay by a combination of variable direct debit and additional bespoke top-ups.  You don't see how that is different, and entirely unnecessary to address the OP's problem?

Several people post here with what they believe to be unnecessarily high credit balances, this is true.  Many of these, upon review, are revealed to be relatively appropriate.  Most have little difficulty receiving refunds, particularly when the balances have proved too high, in fact some have received refunds of credit which they did not want.

PennineAcute

It is how far do you want to go.  If you want control of your payments, with a bit of work it can be done. 

With the current crisis, do I really want to pay an extra £50 a month, with an approximate £600 credit in 12-months (when that £600 would be useful for other bills) or do I want to pay something more realistic?  If I want the latter, why would it not appeal to others?  All it was was a possible solution to avoid BG keeping on altering the OP's end of plan balance.

[Deleted User]

It is a really odd thing going on with that predicted balance and doesn't fit with any normal process that I can think of.

BooJewels

I can't say that I quite understand the detail of the OP's dilemma, as I don't think I've ever worked to any 'end of plan' calculations with BG.

But it is my personal experience that the BG computer has done some very odd stuff with my own account and estimates and DD levels.  It perpetually underestimates my usage (despite giving them monthly readings religiously for about 5 years), tells me that I'm over-paying and will end up with a large credit balance and they keep refunding me any credit and reducing my DD to preposterously low levels.  I pay one month at the reduced level then stick it back up to what it needs to be - then we rinse and repeat after about 3 months.

I keep track of it carefully myself (and the returned funds are ring-fenced in a savings account and I pay pots of it back whenever I hit a debit balance) and tally up with BG once in a blue moon when they deem to send me a bill.  I've only stuck with it as due to these problems I had negotiated a good 2 year fix, that's only just ended.

So I have no personal difficulty in believing that their computer is up to no good with the OP's account.  So I'd second the advice to ensure that you keep careful records yourself and keep track of what you've used and what you should pay for it.  I would recommend that anyone does this anyway, but it's especially important to be religious about it if you can't rely on your supplier being totally accurate in the account management tools they make available to you.   I'm sure if it happens more widely that it must cause great consternation with people who aren't on top of their own usage.

Although it all fairness, the bills themselves have always been spot on and tally with my own numbers, within the variation of the calorific value (less than a fiver per bill), in respect of what they've charged me - it's the on-going on-line account that seems to have gone awry, not helped by them not having a reliably regular billing cycle.

400ixl

OP are you on a smart meter which is updating daily?

If not, how often are you giving actual readings?

vic_sf49

I wonder if the algorithm is messed up, especially with the imminent price changes. Can you check the figures after 1st October, once BG fix what is guaranteed to be a crashed system?

My end of plan balance is doing the opposite, and rising by about £4/day of credit, but that's because my smart meter readings are stuck on June's figures*,  so it assumes my usage is dropping for a 12 month period.

* Yes, I'm giving meter readings, but my account has the old "stuck" usage figures (on the main page) and the new ones I send in (on a separate page in a table).

My credit balance seems to be based on the "stuck" figures.