Best way of setting DD amount?

fly-catchers

I am with BG for dual fuel and have been paying £78 for the last few months. Prior to that it was £250 and earlier still £500. I had built up quite a bit of credit which I knew would be well under and in debit at the end of winter. As I have several heated greenhouses I knew my electricity bill would be vast. Now I have a debit of £1200 as finally BG adjusts it to the readings I have given each month. They want to increase the DD to £700 odd. What I want to do is keep it at £250 which gives me the maximum 2% from my Santander account. And pay off all or most of the debit amount using my cashback credit card. Obviously I can’t change the DD to a lower amount until I reduce the debit amount. As BG seem so slow to do anything is it likely that once I pay off the debit amount I can soon afterwards adjust the DD to an amount I want to pay?

MattMattMattUK

fly-catchers said:

I am with BG for dual fuel and have been paying £78 for the last few months. Prior to that it was £250 and earlier still £500. I had built up quite a bit of credit which I knew would be well under and in debit at the end of winter. As I have several heated greenhouses I knew my electricity bill would be vast. Now I have a debit of £1200 as finally BG adjusts it to the readings I have given each month. They want to increase the DD to £700 odd. What I want to do is keep it at £250 which gives me the maximum 2% from my Santander account. And pay off all or most of the debit amount using my cashback credit card. Obviously I can’t change the DD to a lower amount until I reduce the debit amount. As BG seem so slow to do anything is it likely that once I pay off the debit amount I can soon afterwards adjust the DD to an amount I want to pay?

They are highly unlikely to let you adjust the Direct Debit to an amount which will not cover your ongoing usage even when the debt is cleared. The system is not designed to allow you to game it as processing card payments costs them which is why Direct Debit is cheaper than pay on receipt of bill.

On a side note would kerosene burners not be considerably cheaper then electricity for the greenhouses? By my calculations around 6p per kWh vs 33p ish depending on where you live.