Energy Bills Support Scheme Confusion

pochase

Why is she worse off? She expected to pay 1032, but she paid only £699, if she pays the £333 she got back her debt is gone and she has a small credit.

She paid £333 less, but she still is treated as if she had paid it.

Let's try it differently

1. £180 credit and £180 refund result in zero balance.

2. £1032 paid by direct debit, £333 refund result in a credit of £699

3. Sub totals for gas and electricity added together and 5% VAT added are £1346 energy usage.

4. So she owes EDF now £1346 minus £699 = £647

5. Now she gets the £333 EBSS which reduces the amount she owes to £314. 

6. If they would ask for the £333 back, she has not a debt of £314, but of £647.

ariarnia

BigMac79 said:

pochase said:

She started the billing cycle with zero, the £180 credit was returned.

She paid £1032 DD, but £333 was refunded, so she only paid £699.

She used energy for £1346. So she owes £647.

The government gives her the £333 (which reduces the bill from 1346 to £1013) so this is £647 - £333 = £314.

Energy suppliers either use the refund or reduce the DD so the money is available for the customer to use what they want.

I understand that. But in this case they’ve decided to refund her AND to apply the discount to the bill. So she’s worse off than she was 6 months ago as she obviously wasn’t expecting that to happen. 

how is she worse off if they took £333 of the bill and gave her £333 in her pocket?

shes 333 better off (the same as everyone else) as otherwise she would owe the full £647

BigMac79

She’s worse off because had they just either paid her £333 or credited it to her bill that would be fine. As they’ve done both, which she didn’t expect, it’s left her owing them £314 which she doesn’t have. And she has to find an extra £100pm to cover her DD increase. 

Had she known what they were doing she could have simply repaid them the £66/67 each month rather then ending up having to find £314 in one go. 

pochase

Without the way it was done she would have to find now £647, not £314.

What is better about owing £647 than £314? 

ariarnia

BigMac79 said:

She’s worse off because had they just either paid her £333 or credited it to her bill that would be fine. As they’ve done both, which she didn’t expect, it’s left her owing them £314 which she doesn’t have. And she has to find an extra £100pm to cover her DD increase. 

Had she known what they were doing she could have simply repaid them the £66/67 each month rather then ending up having to find £314 in one go. 

ah. so are you saying shes worse of because she spent the £333 on something else not expecting to have to pay it back for her energy bill?

pochase

OK so what would have happened without the £333?

She would have paid £1032 and got nothing back. 

She would have been billed for £1346, and would be therefore £314 in debt and would have to find £314. You see a similarity to her current situation?

At the same time she would be out of pocket the £333 she got back from EDF that she spent for something else. SO she would have needed to find the £333 somewhere else....

Her problem is that she spent the energy grant on something else than energy. If she would have paid it to EDF there would be no problem. You can spent money only once.

And it was planned this way, that you were able to use the energy grant also for something else. Either pay it back to the supplier if your direct debit was not sufficient, or spent it elsewhere.

She would have needed a DD of £225 to cover her energy use, so the problem is she was underpaying, plus the fact that EDF returned the credit, which is unusual that late in the year. Did she ask for it?

molerat

plus the fact that EDF returned the credit, which is unusual that late in the year. Did she ask for it?

EDF always refund the account down to £0 at the 12 mth review.  If that happens to be in winter, mine was end of November when they refunded my £240 winter store, then the account will be in debit for a while. I suspect there will be quite a few in that situation after EDF taking over the failures in winter 21/22. As long as the DD reflects the correct 1/12th EAC then no problem.  Changing the DD amount by up to -20% is quite straightforward with EDF, I requested it last week and it was confirmed a few hours later.  The problem here though is that OP simply cannot seem to comprehend what has actually happened.

ariarnia

i dont want the op to think were blaming them for this (at least i'm not). energy bills can be confusing at the best of times and i can understand why it might have happened. 

but at the same time its not edf's fault really. they did what the goverment told them to do and there only asking to be paid for the actual energy used. 

and id even say its not really the goverments fault. the comms around the scheme could be better but they needed to get something done quickly and while theres a lot of people who think not everyone should have got the 400 it was the quickest and easiest way to help people when times looked really grim.

what matters now is if the dd is set at the right level. which is a bit hard to work out until we know what the prices will be from 1 april but from whats on the bill it doesn't seem to outrageous. might be a good idea to take a manual reading to review in october to see how much of a cushion you can expect to have for next winter?

Spoonie_Turtle

ariarnia said:

 but at the same time its not edf's fault really. they did what the goverment told them to do and there only asking to be paid for the actual energy used. 

It is slightly, for using a terrible system that doesn't actually make it clear that the credits affect the amount the customer has to pay.  Every year there's the Warm Home Discount for several million people, and what if a customer wants to make a manual payment?

If people are to understand and be in more control of their energy usage and costs, bills need to be understandable, not take a community to explain.

ariarnia

Spoonie_Turtle said:

ariarnia said:

 but at the same time its not edf's fault really. they did what the goverment told them to do and there only asking to be paid for the actual energy used. 

It is slightly, for using a terrible system that doesn't actually make it clear that the credits affect the amount the customer has to pay.  Every year there's the Warm Home Discount for several million people, and what if a customer wants to make a manual payment?

If people are to understand and be in more control of their energy usage and costs, bills need to be understandable, not take a community to explain.

i agree about the billing system more generally but i was talking about the 400 grant. 

lots of companies (even the ones with good billing systems normally) have had confused customers because they had to find somewhere to put this on the bill with little to no warning. 

if it was going to be a yearly thing then they should definately be getting some stick for not having it sorted by now or soon but as a one off short notice thing i think we have to give them some slack... imo.