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!!!

Could you pay off a lump sum in order to reduce the monthly payment?

If you owe them that much then it's fair enough.
Presumably when you have paid for 3 months you'll be pretty much back on an even keel and be able to adjust the dd down again.

Are you using your storage heaters effectively? What else are you using that uses a lot of electricity as even £400+ per month is a huge amount

Now is an excellent time to turn everything off in the house at the plug, see if you can get your future usage down. If you'll struggle to pay that or it will push other stuff to the edge ring Shell and ask them to spread the debt further.

I'm with Shell, & can set/amend my DDs myself.

Call them to rectify the obvious error?

There isn't an error

Shell are complete gobshites. They wrongly billed me for a previous occupants usage, I had to threaten them with legal action before they called the debt collectors off.

We are with Shell too and managed to set ours lower than what they wanted, it may be worth having a play on the we bsite and see what the lowest you can set it is for now

Just because the electricity company wants that level of direct debit, it doesn't mean you have to agree. I'm with British Gas (and also on economy 7) and I set the direct debit myself on the app, obviously taking in mind their recommendation. I'm in a 4 bed, no gas at my house and my recommended dd is £267 per month. Yours sounds way off unless you owe them loads of money already,

Cancel the DD, you don't have to have one.

I don't suppose you have a substantial debit coming out of the winter, OP? It so, they'd need to make it up. Scary though.

My energy supplied has stated what our monthly DD should be, but there is the option of paying less, which we've opted to do (put trying to keep difference aside) in the hope cutting back usage will keep it at lower payment we've chosen. Check if you can do this.

She does if you read the update, she owes them over £1000

Surely you’re in a tonne of debit for that to be the payment?

That’s still a massive bill for a £1000 debt.

Not really. It really needs to be paid by September when usage goes up again.

Ah I see @FloweryCurtainTwitcher

I wish I was still with Octopus- they were great. Are people still moving suppliers to get a deal, or has that trick ended and all suppliers are extortionate?

That'll be a no then....

You can phone Octopus on the number given if you click the underlined bit at the bottom

You would likely have to pay off your debt first though

Phone Octopus. I’ve just switched, I just did it over the phone. I’m starting on the variable rate so you’ll probably be paying the same but I’m impressed with their customer service so far. Plus if you know anyone on Octopus already and they ‘refer’ you you’ll both get £50.
You will have to settle the debt with Shell however.

Yeah, ask for a referral code to get the £50 off your bill and theirs.

I like Octopus too

The phone number

Can you pay the debt off so you can reduce your DD a bit?

You can pay by standing order, just ask them for their bank details and tell them you're cancelling the DD so they do it at their end.

That's horrible! Is it possible we will all get bills like these? I know for a fact that in Italy and Greece have hugely increased their electricity bill because of the ukraine war, but I thought it wouldn't be the case over here...