DD gone up by nearly £70

dom2599

Cardew wrote: »

Your DD is NOT fixed to until 2011.

You may be on the 'fixed to 2011 tariff' but that is quite another thing.

On that tariff, like any other(except the 'Staywarm' type) you will pay for what gas and electricity you use. If you use more than £97 a month your debit balance will build up, exactly as it did before, and your DD will increase to repay that debt.

Yes you are correct, what i was trying to get across is that, if you dont ask you dont get, i asked them to review my DD, and they obliged

Bens_Mom

Is SP one of the better around atm?

dom2599

They've been good to me, plus, as i found out recently, they do listen, my personal opinion is Yes, they are one of the better ones around.

davidlizard

To avoid all of this DD nonsense, the thing to do is take your meter reading (ideally monthly, or at least quarterly) and record them on a spreadsheet (or back of an envelope or anywhere else safe). Then work out how many kWH (kilowatt hours) of both gas and electricity you use - how to do this is on the bill - after all this is the unit in which electricity and gas is sold.

Once you know roughly what your annual usage is, you will have several advantages:

1. You will know exactly how much you should be paying per month on a direct debit, and not end up owing (or be owed) several hundred pounds, or having direct payments being constantly revised.

2. When entering information into the comparison websites, you will get the results specific to you - different providers can be cheaper for low and high usage.

3. When they try and hike your DD up because they think you are paying too little, hit them with your annual usage figures.

Apologies if this is teaching people to suck eggs, but seeing a fair number of people I work with have no idea of their annual usage, and wonder why their DDs change from one extreme to the other, I may as well repeat my advice I give to them.

Dave

purplevamp

davidlizard wrote: »

To avoid all of this DD nonsense, the thing to do is take your meter reading (ideally monthly, or at least quarterly) and record them on a spreadsheet (or back of an envelope or anywhere else safe). Then work out how many kWH (kilowatt hours) of both gas and electricity you use - how to do this is on the bill - after all this is the unit in which electricity and gas is sold.

Thanks Dave

If I looked at my old bills would this work?

davidlizard wrote: »

Apologies if this is teaching people to suck eggs, but seeing a fair number of people I work with have no idea of their annual usage, and wonder why their DDs change from one extreme to the other, I may as well repeat my advice I give to them.

Dave

I have no idea what my usage is, so I'm fine with you teaching me to "suck eggs"

seven-day-weekend

I have always put my meter readings online monthly and monitered my bill so that there are no huge surprises and can't imagine why everyon doesn't take their readings regularly.

My d/d has just risen from £80 to £83 to cover the price increases. I negotiated this with Powergen/E.ON on the phone after claiming back £100 credit left after the winter quarter.

£3 a month I can manage!

Poppycat

As I said in post 5 I record my meter readings monthly and into a spreadsheet and give readings to the utilities

davidlizard

purplevamp wrote: »

Thanks Dave

If I looked at my old bills would this work?

Provided they are based on actual readings rather than estimates, and your usage is approximately the same (i.e. you have not built an extension, changed the boiler, gone from being out all the time to staying in all the time, or a variety of other reasons) then getting the value off an old bill should be fine.

See if you have any from around this time last year, or two bills with actual readings on taken a year apart.

Failing that, your gas/electricity supplier may be able to help - Scottish Power were able to confirm my annual usage - but its worth having your own readings to double check.

tobykim

SP have just sent me an email putting my DD up by £25 and I'm in credit, not by much but still in credit, contacting them tomorrow as I'm not willing to pay that much, if there's a shortfall I'll pay it through the website, the 2 heaviest users in the house have moved out so using less power now or should be anyway

purplevamp

davidlizard wrote: »

Provided they are based on actual readings rather than estimates, and your usage is approximately the same (i.e. you have not built an extension, changed the boiler, gone from being out all the time to staying in all the time, or a variety of other reasons) then getting the value off an old bill should be fine.

Bummer :sad:. My old bills are all, apart from the final one, estimates. EDF didn't seem too bothered in taking readings.