I average £173 energy per month so why do Octopus want to set my direct debit to £376.40?

[LucyLettie]

Currently up against a ‘computer says no’ situation with Octopus. My usage for the last 12 months, including adding back the Gov grant from last year, is £173 per month. I live in the same house with the same energy needs.

And they want my monthly direct debit to be well over double that! Why?!

I’ve tried to manually change it but the lowest I can get it down to is £250. It won’t let me do any less.

I refuse to pay by the estimated direct debit of an energy company. I will pay for what I use and that’s it. I may pay slightly more for doing so, which should be illegal, but at least I’m not allowing them to take money from me before I have spent it. My mum lost hundreds when her energy company went bust.

Yes

I have one! So they know I don’t spend anywhere near £370 a month!

That's the exact (less 40p) sum the bastards are charging me. 18 months ago, they dropped it from £153 to about £120. I queried the £376.00 price after submitting a reading, they said they'd made a mistake and I was £800.00 in credit, next month they said I owed them £800.00 and it was back to £376.00 a month.

I think the sum is actually about £8billion.

Don't mind being corrected, as means they are not sitting on as much of customer money as I think.

@billyt Wow. They must be making a wack off other people's money.

I had this with EDF and the old ‘protecting you’ malarkey. I just refused as I knew exactly what our bills would be and they agreed. 18 months on and I’m still in credit (just).

Just refuse it.

If you can't speak to a person cancel your DD, they'll soon call you!

I had similar, was only using maximum £60pm gas, more like £30 really but they tried to set DD at £147. I told them no chance and they let it stand at £60

That's odd, I have been with Octopus for several years now and not had an issue. Their latest adjustment was downwards and I am a smidge under £400 in credit.

Im trying to find a direct debit payment to adopt an octopus. Thanks

They make money off holding people's balances, so they want to hold as much as possible, when it should be in your bank earning you interest.

Eon actually skipped the first two monthly payments I was expecting, then told me that I'd better manage my "arrears" by being on a higher DD. I insisted it went back down to £25/month (this was decades ago) and I never spent more.

Me too. I never have any problems with them. I pay £100 a mth which covers my winter use and every now and then they try to set payments lower.
I just change it back online, no problem.

We adjust ours to just pay what we use rather then having regular DD, yes it means they payment is different every month but the excess during the summer is sat in our bank account rather the theirs.