Electricity company upping direct debit from £200 to £1150 a month

[nonwonderwoman]

After submitting a meter reading at the weekend, by electricity provider has sent me an email to increase my monthly direct debit from just over £200 a month to £1150. I was convinced it was wrong as that's a 500% increase. In fact I laughed at the crazy attempt by the spam emailer, until I checked and it was a genuine email.
I'll be arguing my case and looking to swap providers (can we still do that to find a bargain) but it just shows that we are in for some really rocky times over the next year. It's not even winter yet!!!

How many bedrooms you got 38?

unless you are Rishi Sunak and this is for your swimming pool, it has to be an error.
Just don't pay it

That doesn't sound right at all. My last bill, based on actual readings, was about £70 for both gas and electricity combined.

Have you been sending in readings regularly? How many units have you actually used in this billing period?

That's insane. I'm on pre pay meters and staying on them. My energy costs seem to have barely gone up, certainly not by the crazy sums people are being charged via DD. Makes me feel much more in control.

5 beds so not small, but definitely not 38! I checked the readings and our usage hasn't massively increased. I think they expect you to overpay over the summer months to cover the winter, but this is quite an over payment.

Are you sure the gas and electric figures haven’t been swapped? Normal cause of such massive discrepancies . . .

How much have you used? Were your previous bills estimated? Seems like a crazy amount- ours has gone up to 170 per month but we have teenagers all of whom have computers, TVs, games consoles and like taking showers plus cooking at random times

That's insane. Definitely check you've not given the wrong readings or misplaced a digit when you've entered them or something.

That is so insane it has to be a mistake.

I'd cancel the direct debit though because ime they are bloody awful at sorting out their mistakes and could very well take that amount for months while you argue back and forth!

That was my second thought, after it being spam, that I had inverted the numbers but the reading looks to be correct and not significantly higher than the usual amount between readings.

This is why I refuse to have a direct debit. We supply meter readings monthly and just pay for what we have actually used. We put the same amount in our bill account all year round though so have credit ready there for when it is needed in winter.

Even if you are a high domestic user it won't be that much.
Check last year's annual statement it should say how many units you used.
£13,000 a year is silly.

It's nonsense, just tell the company you'll provide actual readings.

Contact them and ask how they have arrived at that figure, and if they can't explain it to you, cancel the direct debit with your bank.

Partly why I don't do direct debits. Companies think they can dip into your account and take whatever they feel like.

Which provider is it?
Can you not email or phone them to dispute it?

I'm on flexible economy 7 and the projected usage is £5696. That would be about double what 2021 was, so sounds right after all these increases. I just don't understand how they think that equates to £1150 monthly payment.
There will be a lot of bouncing direct debits if this continues, so I'll definitely be cancelling it with the bank.

It is Shell

Do you have an electric aga or Jacuzzi? The monthly should be at most 1/12 of projected annual.

£475 is a lot less than £1150 can you adjust it in the app?

Are you carrying debt over from a previous bill?

The problem with direct debit is that the company predicts future usage based on your previous usage history coupled with repayment of any debt accrued as a result of the direct debit nit previously being set high enough.

Prior to this current meter reading which generated the huge dd, when was the meter last read (not estimated). Were you previously paying by direct debit? Could you have already been in debit? MIL was laying, say, £50 a month but never cross referenced her paper (estimated) meter readings with what her meter actually said, and has run up a large debit which combined with the price has been a double whammy of an increase. She now has to pay for the costlier electricity she's using each month plus a proportion of the debit built up over the previous year (and most companies will only give a year to pay it back).
It's more important than ever to read your meters monthly and generate a new statement to make sure you're keeping up with your usage.

OMG, thats scary

Do you have the Shell app so you can see your balance and other details?

I think Mrs Moasty has the answer. The £220 direct debit should have doubled back in February, so the DD has been half the bill each month for the last few months. My account is now reading as £1,100 in debt, and some of this would normally balance over the summer months, but it won't this year. Hence the hike.
I've just tried to change the amount of DD on the app, and the lowest it will let me pay a month is £865 - pretty painful...