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!!!

Honestly you must be really stupid if you believe this OP.

Average bills for a 4 bed home with an EPC of D is c£160 per month.

You have no doubt put the wrong readings in.

Or not been paying! Clearly one or the other!

OP has already explained she hasn't been paying enough and is £1k in debt. Also sounds like she's on an all electric tariff so will be paying a higher amount in the first place

The word flexible suggests you're on the price cap tariff, is that right? It also sounds like you have storage heaters?

Do you own your home? With that predicted usage it's probably worth investing in a more efficient heating system, even if you have to borrow money to do so, the payback should be fairly quick.

Possibly also worth checking if there are any grants available to help with the cost.

Definitely do what you can to reduce your usage, that's a huge bill.

I'm on gas and electric, with radiators and a new boiler, so not storage heaters.

It is a Victorian house with drafty fireplaces in most rooms plus and only half the windows are double glazed. The rest are single wooden sashes. Wfh so heating and lights on all winter. Plus lots of tumble drier use, which I have been cutting down since the nicer weather.

I would love to only spend £160 a month as per the average. As we know with all averages, there has to be a high and low end of that average.

You won't be able to move until you pay off the debt you owe OP.

I'm electric only and paying around £150 for a brand new, well insulates two bedroom house. We never have the heaters on between April and September. But i do like my water scalding hot. You've clearly been underpaying at £200 PM for a 4 bedroom electric only.

Why are you on economy 7 if you have no storage heaters? Economy 7 has a cheaper night tariff for charging the heaters so if you are heating the house in an alternative manner then you'll be paying too much

You’re on the wrong tariff completely If you don’t have storage heaters and don’t use the bulk of your electric between midnight -7am!

We are in a 5 bed house single skin so insulation poor. We are paying £500 pm. We are not in debt. DH and I both wfh. 3 teenagers. No tumble dryer (line dry everything even in winter on airers). I do a lot of cooking and washing and we are running 5 lots of electronics. My DH never turns a flipping light off..... so your monthly payment without the extra to pay off the debt doesn't seem way out to me. We are with Octopus. I can only dream of £160pm goodness knows how that is possible!

Can you pay some of the debt off and then reduce your direct debit?
Or surely if you pay the higher amount direct debit for 1 or 2 months most if not all your debt will be paid off then you can reduce the direct debit (if you can afford that).
If not I’d ring them and tell them you can’t afford it and ask to pay it off over a longer period

Shell did this to me @nonwonderwoman but I have a smart meter so I know they were just trying it on. I rang them up and told them what my smart meter said and they apologised and told me the increase had been ‘automatic’ and they’d put it back down to what it was.

If I hadn’t called them I would have been paying twice what I actually use. It’s immoral the way they do this.

Not sure about the economy 7 really - it is the meter that was at the house when we moved in 5 years ago. Never really a problem and most of our electricity / gas was used in the evenings as we used to be out working in offices. I'll check if there is a better alternative.

I'll just pay a big chunk off and get the direct debit down then move in a couple of months if the Octopus rate is comparable.

Mine went up from £120 to £400. I cancelled the direct debit. But that's the bloody bill - as in £200 a month in the summer so I'm guessing £600 in the winter IF i put the heating on. I can't really afford £200 a month - and that's the actual bill right now with zero heating. So guess I really will be bloody freezing this winter. My poor kids. We both work too. It's disgusting.

Economy 7 is only useful for you if you have a storage tank which is heating up the hot water overnight for you to use the next day. And storage heaters which also heat up overnight for day release of heat. Keep in mind that the 'cheap' rate runs from something like 2am to 7am, so if you are doing laundry and using lots of electricity ⚡️ n the evening you will still be paying the higher rate. It's no problem for the electricity company to change your meter.
For people on electricity only and no gas, it used to be an option to change to oil heating I think, but oil has shot up in price. I'm not sure there's any way to massively cheapen bills right now.

Another day, another energy thread where no one mentions how much their energy costs or the amount they use, just referring to their direct debit as if that is the law.

Roughly, we now pay per kWh 7p for gas and 27p for electricity, up from 4p and 20p respectively. Standing charges nearly doubled to £15 and £8 a month.

2 adults in a 3 bed semi, both home all day as we are retired. With shell energy, they wanted to increase out direct debit to 120 but I reduced it to 85. Last month our bill was 64 quid, it will be a little less this month as no heating on since it's mild. We are well in credit and 7p per kWh is cheap as chips.

We don't skimp but I do keep a check, right now the only things drawing power are our 2 fridge freezers.

I have no idea how people use so much energy in their homes, we spend way more on petrol.