Another electricity one. Sse is going to tell the bank to increase my direct debit to £400.00 a month.

[coodawoodashooda]

Do I cancel the direct debit? Is there a penalty for not paying by direct debit. I can't possibly afford that.

Keep the direct debit you have at the moment... send in a reading online on payday every month and pay the excess amount... they cannot object as you do not owe them any money... if you cannot pay the full amount then tell them and pay what you can to top up the direct debit amount.. they will have to make allowances for millions of people i this country.... while countjng their millions and millions of profit in their spare time..

I'm on a fix until 3rd November. Can change direct debits myself and I'm around £400 in credit. I'm hoping eon will let me decide on my new direct debits from then but going by all these posts I'm wondering what the minimum amount is they'll let me do. There's no way I can afford £400 plus. About £300 including the £66 is what I'm going to pay. I just hope they accept it. I'll be cutting back as much as possible but we aren't high users anyway. Looking at usage it should be enough esp with the credit We have just in case.

I’m with SSE and they’re so bad. They set me up with a direct debit for our flat. I had the bill from the previous tenant as it had numbers on for us to call to set up our own account. The previous tenant was paying for her usage monthly and was paying about £30 in electric and £20 in gas. When I called them they set me up a DD for £140 for both after two months of paying it we were in massive amounts of credit. I called them and cancelled the DD and now I pay quarterly. I have the SSE app which tells me my usage for the month and whatever I have used that month I top up my account into credit so when the bill does come it’s already paid for with the credit. It might not work for Everyone but our flat is small and our usage costs aren’t that much so this works for us. We had worked out that we would have been about £700 in credit from when we moved in until Christmas is we had continued with the DD which is a ridiculous amount of money considering we would still be paying the DD every month with all that in credit

@EmmaH2022 Most of the last few years the price cap was about £1200, last October it went up a little more, in April it went up to £1,971, from last week it's £3,549, in January it's expected to be £5,386, and then go up to about £7k in April. Maybe £9k or even £10k in October.

Based on what you had been paying the energy company algorithm must have thought you needed an adjustment. At these kinds of prices, a few hundred in credit can be eaten up quite quickly,

I read somewhere the energy companies are hiking up the DDs of everyone so that the people that overpay compensate for the people that wont pay or underpay. So it leaves their balance sheets ok.
I know someone will come along and tell me thats rubbish but it makes perfect sense to me. If its wrong why are people in credit who are good payers being asked to pay even more???

If that's true that's bloody awful.

the bank will automatically take the direct debit and then any other outgoings will be less,
there will be no food
no petrol
just direct debits

that can't be right
they have increased it already, a couple of weeks ago in my case, they forecast this is what I need to pay
regardless of whether other people will pay or not.

Because the prices are going up significantly and credit will disappear very fast once the darker nights and colder weather hits

That Which? Calculator is terrifying😳 Based on my current dd of £250 a month I’ll be paying £839 by April. For a 3 bed semi detached. There’s no way in the world we can afford that. Don’t know what we can do.

SSE do this to me regularly. I tell them I can't afford that much, tell them what I am willing to pay, and they reduce the DD to that. I'm in credit usually, so they don't really quibble.

Call your energy company and discuss with them. I have NEVER paid the DD amount they’ve stated in last 5 years with 4 different suppliers ( I’ve moved 1 and switched on moving and another couple of times). EDF for instance have tried to increase my DD twice in last 6 months

but before you do that you need to work out what your actual bill for the year will be based on your usage and current tariffs. Everyone should be doing this. You need to know usage during each of the seasons and annual usage. If you’ve lived in house more than one year that data will be available. However, for goodness sake, Make sure it is based on actual meter readings NOT their company estimates. If it isn’t then Start reading your meters monthly by taking and retaining photos, and update those readings in their systems monthly. This allows the company to get a much better and accurate estimate of your annual usage. You need to move away form allowing them to use estimates and provide regular readings yourself manually, or with a smart meter.

from this calculate your annual costs, you’ll need to convert gas reading to kWh but internet tells you how to do this. Then divide by 12. Your DD should be set at that amount meaning you overpay in summer, and underpay on winter to arepas the costs out.

once you know your costs, based on your actual usage form accurate meter readings you can compare that with what they are proposing. If it is different, that is your evidence to tell them what you want your DD set at.

Not a single company has ever caused me any issues or hassle when I’ve called with this information and challenged the amount they’ve suggested. They are more than helpful, it is quick, and they’re happy to deal with people who actually are keepin* close tabs on their bills and usage.

they usually give you about 1 months notice to an increase, so that’s time to do the calculations and call them if it’s wrong.

.

I am amazed at the amount of people getting up in arms over their DD's rising.

Do you have your heads buried in the sand and are you not aware that the price cap has just gone up 80 odd % with another rise predicted in January.

I use £100 per month over summer for my electric, in a flat with no gas so have an emersion heater for water, and no where to dry washing so have to use a tumble dryer. My DD us set at £200.
In winter I would normally use £200 to include the heating, I will be using around £400pm with the raises and upwards of £600 from January if they rise again.

I don't have £600pm to spare so am glad my DD has gone up to ensure my DD is affordable each month, and am grateful for the credit ive acceued over summer towards the rising winter bills.

Why do people refuse to pay energy bills but are happy to be rinsed by the super markets. There is a thread running about fish fingers being £7.50. What will you all do, just take what you want from supermarket and not pay? No you wouldn't, you would cut back and make changes so your food bills are cheaper. So maybe you should also do thay with your energy bills too.

you can also make savings in tour everyday life to afford necessities too; no new clothes, no meals out, no holidays, cancel the sky tv eyouuf you can't afford energy bills, these are all luxuries that tou can do without.
If you have done all that and still genuinely can't afford necessities then speak to the energy companies about what grants and support may be available to you, but cancelling your DD as the energy company has tried to help you budget is not the way forward unless you want bailiffs at your door fitting a prepayment meter or a CCJ as you have fallen behind and can't afford the actual usage bill you requested.

Well not exactly. I’m lucky to be on fixed deal till 2024, and EDF still tired to put my DD up twice in last 6 months

There are a couple of main reasons.

Mine is that I’ve not had a full year with them yet so they are estimating my future usage. And have not been using my actual usage accurately - making assumptions that are incorrect. Despite me providing meter reading once per month. They’ve just switched on my existing smart meter and come back lowering my DD 🤦‍♀️ , but I don’t agree with them on this either 🤣🤣it is about right where it is based on my actual usage and current deal prices. If you’re not providing meter readings monthly, or have smart meter, the companies estimates of your bills are just a guess…and they’re very conservatively over estimating to try to prevent debt bulding

other reasons are that everyone will spend more in winter and your DD is the ROLLING average over NEXT 12 months. That includes the price hikes over winter 2022-23 to come now, so this means DD will go up or down everytime a price change is announced within the next 12 month period, if you’re not on a fixed deal.

What they’re not really taking account of though is the £67 per month refund we’ll all be getting between October and March. Not that this will help much.

You need to be 100% sure that you aren’t going to be using it. Do they want to charge £400 because that’s what your usage is? If so you will need to cut back on energy use or cut back on other areas wherever possible.
If you use you previous 12 months total energy (should be on every bill) and put it into a calculator with the new capped tariff, this will tell you what your direct debit needs to be.
Bear in mind that there will be another increase in January and they may also be allowing for this in their direct debit calculation as more than half of your energy use in the next 12 months will be at the even higher January rates.
You definitely don’t want to come off direct debit as there are higher charges for paying in arrears, also if you are on a tight budget and don’t pay by direct debit the chance of you saving up what you didn’t pay is smaller and there’s more chance of getting into debt. Also you would have an absolutely huge winter bill to find the cash for. Best to spread the expected years energy use over 12 equal payments.

@Sooveritallnow Agree with you there. Reading this thread, it seems many are not aware of the price increases in April and October. There will be another one coming in Jan again before we hit Spring. You'll need those credits or you won't be able to afford electricity and gas over winter.

You will use significantly less energy. It is the only way around this problem.

With very simple maths, and nothing about standing charges and averages. The price rises were 54% in April and 80% in October. Lets say your DD is based on the April price and you are paying £200. Then without taking the predicted Jan rise into account, £200 with a 80% rise is already £360. The power company will likely uses a formula to include some of the Jan pricing increase because we usually build up credit over the summer to cover winter.

SSE?

Cancel it. Immediately. They’ve taken an amount I didn’t agree from me today and won’t return it. This is after months of inaccurate billing that made it look like we owed them hundreds of pounds when we didn’t earlier in the year, a technical error which every single person I spoke to couldn’t understand or rectify. Their call centre is a joke.

Just pay your monthly amount manually yourself. There’s no legal requirement to pay by DD.

Maybe post your actual usage OP so people can more easily tell if you are being reasonable or not, a DD amount means nothing

I have the same issue with Scottish Power. I'm £300 in credit and my monthly DD is currently more than my usage so I'm still building credit. They increased my DD by 80% and the app will not permit me to reduce it. I spoke to them on the phone to explain that 3 people lived in the house last year, now it's only 1 and my usage is much lower (I submit readings monthly) but the most they could do was reduce the increase to 70%. In the meantime, more credit is building up.

I'm terrified of them increasing it again with no justification. When I asked to just pay for what I use rather than DD they said I could but the unit price would be much higher.

I don't think this is correct from an accounting perspective - I've never studied utility company accounting specifically but if you are in credit then yes they will have that money in their bank account (theoretically, it maynot literally be in the bank) but they will have a corresponding debt of your credit balance.

At this time of year anyone who pays by DD should be in credit. That's how it usually works - you effectively overpay during summer, build up credit, then use that credit up during winter and end up roughly zero in spring. But if prices go up then the credit isn't enough, it'll be used up too quickly and then people will go very rapidly in to debt. It makes total sense that even credit balances need to increase their DD in many cases as the price rise in October is enormous - roughly triple what it was last October.

So you're happy to pay a higher rate then and not get the £400 rebate automatically? Odd...

Before doing anything, calculate how much you expect to use over the next 12 months in kilowatts.

Then calculate what your estimate cost will be, using the new cap prices for October which have already been announced, and take into account the rises expected in Jan and April (plenty of estimates are available online).

Don't forget to add in the daily standing charge.

Once you know this figure you can calculate how much you will need to budget over the next 12 months and use that to work out a reasonable direct debit amount (paying the 12 month cost evenly over each 12 month). Then contact your supplier and tell them you are willing pay to pay this amount monthly. If they won't ask about living to a variable direct debit.

Avoid moving from direct debit, as other payment methods will cost around 6% more.

@Bonbon21 I did that last winter with Scottish Power as we have some electric storage heaters so use a lot in the winter (no mains gas here). I read my meters on the last day of the month & input the readings on their website. That generated a bill so I took away the amount of my DD that went out the next day and paid the balance immediately. I never owed them money and have been on a fix since last August which has another year to run. Yet SP has just decided to put up my DD, despite me being in credit. I will give it one month then drop it on the website. Last year my dad was here for months and it's his cottage that uses the heaters. He's not planning on coming for a while yet, so SP can bugger off.