Variable DD

Spoonie_Turtle

Can anyone please refresh my memory about the timings for vDD?  I'm with Octopus in case that's relevant.

Currently my billing date is … well I'm not entirely sure.  DD date is the 20th, the next balance when they charge me is the 21st, and my bills cover somewhere around the 22nd to the 24th or even 25th.

I used to set a minimal DD payment and pay the rest by card for cashback but that's been stopped for a while and I'm not very good at keeping on top of it any more, it usually takes the bill coming through (after a few days in the -ve) to remind me to pay.  They want to up my fixed DD but I'd rather not owe anything and just have it paid off in full each month.

So based on the dates above, can anyone please tell me what the likely cycle will be if I asked for variable DD?  My brain is simply not working right now to go looking for myself.

northernstar007

i was the same as you paid on credit card to top my account up
what i done was looked at my useage in £'s about a week before the bill is made and added the amount to my account and always kept my account in credit by about £20

twopenny

I'm with EDF on a smart meter and do variable DD.
It works well for me. Paid up to date and I don't have a pot of money sitting in some businesses account. 
I also get a paper bill. It's a bit annoyingly often monthly but reminds me to regularly check that it's right or that it's not gone wildly off.

WiserMiser

Octopus sent me an email meter reading request just before noon today.  Send a reading this afternoon and received the statement earlier this evening.

Played the Wheel of Fortune and won £1 (second time that's happened).  It's already showing in my account.

DD would have been requested on 7 August but I've just paid by Amex.  That's also been credited.

It doesn't get much better than that !

Spoonie_Turtle

WiserMiser said:

Octopus sent me an email meter reading request just before noon today.  Send a reading this afternoon and received the statement earlier this evening.

…

DD would have been requested on 7 August but I've just paid by Amex.  That's also been credited.

It doesn't get much better than that !

Oh so can you still choose to pay it off by card before they request the vDD?

northernstar007 said:

i was the same as you paid on credit card to top my account up
what i done was looked at my useage in £'s about a week before the bill is made and added the amount to my account and always kept my account in credit by about £20

That's pretty much what I was doing but life is life-ing and I can't keep up any more.

Qyburn

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Can anyone please refresh my memory about the timings for vDD?  I'm with Octopus in case that's relevant.

My experience with Octopus and variable DD is that you don't directly get to choose the DD date, it's driven by the meter reading date with the DD being taken around 16 days later.

If you submit manual readings this is wholly under your control. Everytime you submit a reading they generate a bit in the next day or so, and schedule the DD.

On a smart meter you need to persuade Octopus to take the reading every month on your chosen date. They're not very good at that, and keep changing ours to apparently random dates. They reset it when asked, but can't tell me why it keeps changing.

Spoonie_Turtle

Ah I forgot to say I'm on Agile; they haven't taken a reading since 17th April (and I'm mostly having to live life from my bed, although I could ask others to take a reading if/when I remember but I rely on them for so much else I don't want to have to ask for yet another thing unless I need to).

But if I can pay off the balance when they decide to send a bill, I think I'd like to do that (prompted by then sending the e-mail) and then my account won't be sitting in debit for two weeks every time.  At the moment it's in debit for a few days each time which doesn't sound so bad in comparison to if I left vDD to do its thing!

dealyboy

Well I guess each supplier is different Spoonie, but just to say that for me MVDD is so much more straightforward. I'm with E.ON Next, smart meter reads are performed for what the registers will be at 00:00 on the 1st of a month, I receive a statement on the 2nd and the DD is actioned on the 17th.

I am happy to pay for what I've used despite it being higher during winter months, I do appreciate however that this will not suit everybody's circumstances.

I hope you're well.

Zekko

I pay by variable direct debit with E.ON Next.

Meter readings requested on 21st with direct debit taken 2 weeks later.

The July bill for gas and electric was £51.80. 😀

I pay for what I use and I’d rather put away money in a high interest savings account to cover winter bills, rather than it sitting in some business account.

Qyburn

Qyburn said:

On a smart meter you need to persuade Octopus to take the reading every month on your chosen date. They're not very good at that, and keep changing ours to apparently random dates#. They reset it when asked, but can't tell me why it keeps changing.

As if prompted by my post, Octopus have just whacked out a bill covering import, but not export, for the period 1st to 22nd July 2025. That end date has no significance whatsoever.  Honestly Octopus now appear to be acting as if they actually want to anger their customers. 

I've got years of stats on our energy use and spend, on a monthly basis and off all the suppliers I've dealt with only Octopus insists on billing at random so that to get a months data I have to add up some bills and divide others.

MWT

Qyburn said:

Qyburn said:

On a smart meter you need to persuade Octopus to take the reading every month on your chosen date. They're not very good at that, and keep changing ours to apparently random dates#. They reset it when asked, but can't tell me why it keeps changing.

As if prompted by my post, Octopus have just whacked out a bill covering import, but not export, for the period 1st to 22nd July 2025. That end date has no significance whatsoever.  Honestly Octopus now appear to be acting as if they actually want to anger their customers.  

You can see your use and cost aggregated by day/week/month/year on your account page, billing on the other-hand will be at different periods and end dates, and yes, they can move around a bit.

Calendar monthly billing is not something that is practical to support when you have millions of customers as it tends to concentrate the resource load into a few days instead of spreading it out across the month.

Very easy to get the data you want from the website though...