Paying British Gas by direct debit

Im fairly sure that payments are re assessed on a yearly basis only and any money owed to you will be sent once they do their anual consumption calculations for increase/decrease your payments.Otherwise as soon as summer is over and everyone is in credit they will all be requesting their monies and will be in debt with their supplier throught winter.

Someone might be along to correct me but i think im right in what i said : )

I think, Squiggles, that you are correct about the assessments.

If, however, you leave Brit Gas and, I presume, others of the same ilk and you have credit lying, ou will have to approach tehm for it as they no onger advise the customer. I was fortunate in having a friedn working with them who advised me that I had £150 in credit lying waiting to be claimed. The friend advised me that Brit Gas wouldn't have informed me of this fact.

Moral of story: if you are changing a supplier or ceasign a supply, phone pu and check if they owe you anything then claim it.

Hi all,

I worked for British Gas for around 8 years, up until recently.

Your monthly DD is based on a review of the previous year's consumption (assuming it's not estimated). So if your total consumption last year was £240, you will need to pay £20 per month. Of course, you won't use this much during the summer and hence will build up a credit but this credit, together with the £20 payments you keep paying, should cover your winter gas consumption - the idea is that you should finish 12 months after you started with a balance of nil. The scheme is re-assessed twice a year, at 6 and 12 months.

Although you're not paid interest on the credit, you're not charged debit interest on any debit balance and you get a discount for paying by DD.

At the end of the 12 months, any credit over £50 will automatically be refunded into your bank account - any figure under £50 will be kept by British Gas and factored-in to your next year's payments (i.e. they should go down by a few pounds per month). You can of course contact them and request a refund if you'd prefer to trouser your cash.

The more consumption history in the billing system, the more accurate your payments should be.

The best advice I can give is to keep a note of your own meter readings at the same time each month - if you use the (*very approximate*) rule of thumb that each unit on a 4-dial meter costs 50p, and each unit on a 5-dial meter costs 17p, you can calculate a ballpark figure of how much you're using - if your payments are way out, you can call BG with your meter reading info and get them to amend the payments accordingly.

Vital Spark - sounds like you had a bad experience; when you transfer gas suppliers, you should normally get a closing statement which shows your balance (credit or debit) - credit should automatically be refunded by the system into your bank account, or by cheque if you've cancelled the Direct Debit.

Cheers!