Goverment help re Enrgey

ariarnia

aayush said:

page 2
as you can see my bill oct my payment and the gov help 

should I  not take 66of my total nov bill and pay the balance 

you see on page 2 the 166 it says that has been paid? that is made up of your payments and the government payment of 66. 

on page 1 you can see they have taken your 166 of what you owe BEFORE telling you what you need to pay. 

that means what you should pay (if you can) is the full amount due. you shouldn't take the 66 of again because it's already been taken off. 

if you are struggling to pay you can talk to them (or someone like stepchange) but what you definitely shouldn't do is reduce the amount you pay without talking to them first.  

Jyana

ariarnia said:

aayush said:

page 2
as you can see my bill oct my payment and the gov help 

should I  not take 66of my total nov bill and pay the balance 

you see on page 2 the 166 it says that has been paid? that is made up of your payments and the government payment of 66. 

on page 1 you can see they have taken your 166 of what you owe BEFORE telling you what you need to pay. 

that means what you should pay (if you can) is the full amount due. you shouldn't take the 66 of again because it's already been taken off. 

if you are struggling to pay you can talk to them (or someone like stepchange) but what you definitely shouldn't do is reduce the amount you pay without talking to them first.  

I think, but am assuming here at present still admittedly, that the debt is being paid back in an agreed arrangement of £5 a month at present, which Shell are happy with.

The bit I am unsure of is if the £66 is also going to the debt, or if it has been taken off the energy charges, or a bit of both. Page one shows that £166.08 was paid for the month - £100.08 (£5 of which was towards the debt) from the customer and £66 rebate - so I would assume that the electricity used in October would have come to £161.08 since the customer pays by full monthly bill.

But the electricity charges on page one state that they were £139.68, so I'm, a little confused...but then again we have seen the different ways companies are adding the charge to bills and it may simply be down to where they have added the charge in the bill making the figures reflect strangely. Without more information, it's still a bit of a muddle for me. And this is without the fact that page two shows the £66 going into the energy account after the bill card payments do, i.e. look like Nov's credit and not October's.

ETA Ignore the strike through text. That bill is for November's usage after a second look at the bill. 

It appears as though the £66 payment coming in after the bill is created is what is throwing off the amount being asked for on it when sent out to the customer. This is what is leading to it reducing the debt overall rather than the monthly bill itself. I don't know if a change of date is possible, but if I were the OP, I would move to monthly direct debit as this would not only see the credit back to the bank account ever month, it would see a big reduction in the amount paid for energy overall.

jbuchanangb

As the OP has an arrangement to repay arrears at £5 per month, and seems not to be able to afford to pay £487 for the whole bill, the next best thing would be to pay for the energy used in this billing period which is £139.68 plus the agreed £5. In this case the EBSS money £66 will help reduce the debt. If money is really tight, OP could pay £73.68 towards the energy used, the EBSS payment will cover the rest, plus the agreed £5 totalling £78.68. This will result in a balance carried forward of £342.54. The debt will thus have been reduced by the agreed £5. That leaves 5 years and 8 months of payments at £5 per month to get the debt down to zero.

ariarnia

jbuchanangb said:

 In this case the EBSS money £66 will help reduce the debt. If money is really tight, OP could pay £73.68 towards the energy used, the EBSS payment will cover the rest, plus the agreed £5 totalling £78.68..

i would say if theres any doubt about what the op should pay (if they can't afford the full amount outstanding) then what they should do is phone there supplier and talk about what is owed and what they can afford to pay.

it would be awful for them to get advice on here based on our best guess and to then get stung with penalties because we didn't understand the agreement between the op and supplier.