Impact of cancelling Direct Debit with Bulb?

marr0g

EssexHebridean said:

dunstonh said:

They are looking at your account and see a bunch of estimates.   They potentially perceive you as not caring and lacking common sense because you don't give meter readings.  It works both ways.

In fairness, they're not wrong are they... 

marr0g said:

Hi EssexHebridean, I'm aware that my irregular meter readings don't give them an accurate picture of my usage, but I don't care.

The thing about public forums is that they are for the benefit of more people than just the OP asking the question. So in the case of this thread, matters covered include how bulb deal with non-DD payments,  that they are wrongly estimating use on an account, and then in the advice given, the reason why those incorrect estimates are being given, and how someone could go about solving the problems.  Down the line that may well be helpful to someone else in a similar position - ergo "it's not all about you" when you post a thread here!  

In the current climate, it's rare for people to be in a fortunate enough position to "not care" that the estimates of what they will be expected to pay for their energy use are wildly inaccurate - most people posting on here are in a position where pennies need to be watched, and as a general rule they also understand that if there are things they can do themselves to ensure that things are kept accurate, it makes a lot of sense to do that.  And it also makes a lot of sense that when we, as regular posters on the boards see a situation in which we can make helpful suggestions as to how the OP might improve their situation, we do so. 

That's all fair enough, @EssexHebridean, but here's the thing, I have good reason for running on estimates that are unrelated to this precise issue, and since I'm looking for a route to paying less from next month onwards over the winter, solutions that would take months to 'work' aren't useful for me. Now to your point about wider utility of information: I don't mind general advice being given on a public forum post, but there are different ways these things can be framed. It's the direct criticism without full context, particularly accompanied with incorrect advice accompanied with irrelevant supporting information, that got my back up.

ariarnia

so you plan is to cancel your dd for three( or more?) months until your credit is used and then set your dd back up? 

the problems i see with that are that you don't have reliable estimates of your usage so you don't know how long your credit will actually last so you'll have to be much more careful about taking readings and watching what your using (id say probably taking readings every week but i'm cautious about that kind of thing) because the website quoted by sparky says they WILL charge you if you go into debt because of cancelling your dd.

i would also think that when you set your dd back up they might set your dd even higher than you would like as you would be starting from nothing. but depending on if you had given readings regularly while not having a dd then at least you might at that point have the three months of readings they like to see. only problem being those readings would be at your time of highest usage so their annual estimate might then be a lot higher than your actual annual usage.

also have you checked if you will lose and dd discount by cancelling your dd? i think bills are 5-10% higher if you don't have a dd set up and sometimes you won't be eligible for tariffs (which obviously doesn't matter if you are on the standard variable rate) 

honestly unless you are actually hurting for the money and need it now for something else then i would think a lower than you think you need dd and giving them regular readings would get you your money back over time and balance things out quicker/with less stress. 

if you do decide to use it then it would be good if you could honestly update here so someone else thinking the same thing can read what happened to help them decide. 

t0rt0ise

marr0g said:

t0rt0ise said:

Bulb charge the same for all payment methods but they did threaten me with an admin charge if I cancelled the DD. Whether they would actually have done so I don't know. In the end I opted to pay with variable DD where they took the whole bill amount each month. I've recently left them and moved to Octopus and pay the same way with them. It doesn't suit everyone but does suit me.

Edit to add: you do have to give regular monthly meter reads though.

Thanks, this is useful to know. I'd actually like to move to Octopus before they buy Bulb anyway just for the referral cash, as I believe their tariffs are functionally identical, but their website currently insists I _phone_ them because I won't save money by switching which, ugh. Also I have an enormous amount of credit with Bulb right now and I worry they'll take ages to sort it out and probably find ways to take some off me as energy companies always seem to when you move.

And just for completeness even though the OP is no longer reading, you can change to octopus by phone, twitter direct message, or as I did, by email.