It's worth reviewing your energy bills

elkiedee

I notice this came up in the MSE email this week, but I've managed to get my gas and electricity direct debits from a total of almost £236 monthly in March to £126.01, (so, over £100 a month and I've been refunded £651!!!! I wish I'd done it sooner - it could have been a big dent in last year's credit card bills and the interest I was paying - my dad helped me to pay those off in January/ February this year, when I started to look at some of my other bills).

From logging into my gas and electricity accounts online, I've read around and got a gas smart meter - we already had one for electricity. I've realised that under the current system, paying by direct debit and the idea of spreading payments through the year are being misused by energy companies - I shouldn't be paying for next winter's bills 6 months in advance, I can tuck it away to earn a little interest for the next few months, and even then I've been wildly overcharged in 2023/early 2024.

I asked for a refund of credit on my gas bill and a review of my direct debit payments in March - they gave me £463 but didn't review the payments that had resulted in that credit balance. Last week I phoned up and today I got another £188.27 back (in just 2 months since the last payment was agreed) and my direct debit has been reduced from £154.74 to £75 for now. If I start getting into debit, I'm sure they'll review it in less than a year's time without being asked, and I can actually increase my direct debit online when that happens (the system only allows changes one way).

On electricity, I was able to reduce my monthly direct debit payments by 10% (£8.10) on the website, and I didn't have a credit balance, but then in April I got an email saying we have to change your Direct Debit to (uh uh) £51.01 - that's a reduction of more than £22, meaning my payment this month was over £30 less than in March!  

Prepare before you contact them - I tried the online chat but it is so slow - I used to work as a legal secretary so I type quite fast but it's time consuming working out what to write and then I have to watch that the other person "is typing" for a rather long time. My first request (using online chat feature) that British Gas review my payments got a big refund but no response on why I was paying so much to build up that credit. Whereas the phone was answered quite quickly, I had to press a bit over payments and it took some time to get an offer of £100 a month, to which I pointed out that I'd built up a lot of credit, and that if I'm not paying enough in autumn/winter to cover bills I can change it myself, but I didn't want to do pay next winter's bill 6 months in advance! Finally I was asked what I thought I should pay so I suggested £75.

I do have other bills that have gone up and I wimped out of a confrontation with Virgin Media in particular, but I still have a net gain of £651 in two repayments, plus over £80 for a few months, plus a little bit of extra savings interest for a few months. I'm trying to build up a bit of money towards the scary costs of higher education for my sons (who have just had A level and GCSE mocks so it's not very far off).

born_again

Switch to variable billing where you only pay for what you use each month.
Only downside is you need to budget yourself for the periods of bigger bills. 
Each to their own on that one.

If you are out of contract with Virgin that is pretty easy via the online chat. I got mine back down for the same service for a extra £4 for 18 months.

TheElectricCow

All quite good advice, and regular review of any outgoing payments is always a good idea. There are easier methods to consider though. Unless you have any particular attachment to British Gas (e.g. a fixed tariff with exit fees) there are suppliers who'll allow you to instantly manage your payments yourself online without the need for any debate with customer service, such as Octopus where your direct debit amount can be entirely your choice so long as the bill gets paid.

Variable Direct Debit is another good option for those who don't want to carry a balance with their supplier, and it simply means the bill is automatically paid in full each month. Most suppliers do offer this if requested, I believe excluding any British Gas customers on their new system which apparently doesn't support this payment method.

elkiedee

I'm not recommending my gas supplier particularly, but I suspect that they all play games, I've just got a smart meter installed for gas and I'm a bit wary of being tied into another contract related deal when there seem to be a lot of price changes going on. 

So it might or might not be better to switch, but if you don't want to have to keep chasing switches it's also worth checking what's going on with your existing supplier.