How much in credit are you for gas and electricity

[whatisforteamum]

Dh told me we are 700 in credit with them.
I don't want the heating on more than an hour a day until winter hits.
What is everyone s situation at this point.

£60 in credit.

£347. We're fairly low users, but on current calculations the total of that, our monthly DD and government help won't cover us until April (which is when we always wipe out the final credit).

£800
And the heating is now on

About £50

We just have electric though (and an oil tank, no gas) so our bills are fairly consistent throughout the year. Yes winter costs more, but not massively. Our direct debit is pretty close to our usage.

I refuse to have loads of credit with the electricity company. I’d rather make interest on my own money in my own account and pay what I owe them.

We had £850 credit but did a meter reading yesterday and I’m SHOCKED!

From 1st Sept spent:

£450 on electricity
£230 on gas

im worried and been quite careful - what an earth I’m I doing with the electricity?

I see your logic OP but once you start a king exceptions, everyone wants one.

OK so you get it beside you're on Mat pay and Dave gets it for 6 months sick but (if it's stat sick pay) what about Jenny who had one week off? And April is just under and gets it but her DH earns 100k and Steve is just over so doesn't and his wife earns 10k and once Penny has paid childcare for her triplets she has less take home pay than anyone!

Zero. I pay the bill quarterly by variable DD, the tariff is the same as monthly fixed DD. I put money away each month into a Marcus account where it earns a bit of interest for me instead of the energy company!

Electric only, about £120 in credit, we can change our DD each month though.
Filled up with Oil - that was expensive £2k in Sept - hope to last all winter and well into spring. That does all cooking/heating/hot water

Lol about £1200 in debt. Its fine, I have lost the will to live anyway, I will put the heating on for an hour until April. Then they will increase the amount of money they take from ESA, I'll probably have a 45 pounds a fortnight to live on then, won't life be grand.

I get billed every 6 months with EDF, so yes, just before the bill came out it appeared that I was £1000 in credit.
Every month I send them readings and have a spreadsheet here that I enter the readings in, calculate how much I've used and see how the figures are going. When the November bill came I was about £20 out in my favour, so I was quite pleased with that.
I've tried to ask them for quarterly or monthly bills but if I do that I can't pay by direct debit, only pay on production of the bill and it costs more.

Those who think they are massively in credit, do you know how much you’ve spent. You may well not be in credit at all. billed monthly but have a smart meter so can suit readings at any point and it'll bill be for what I've used up to that point so it's anyways roughly accurate. Scottish Power

We send readings each month I will check when we are billed.Thank you for that.

Exactly this! They’re not offering interest so I’m not saving my money in their accounts!

Why on earth are people building credit with electric/gas companies? Pay on receipt of bill, with frequent meter readings or a smart meter is best.

But not everyone can cope or wants to cope with seasonal variations, so equal direct debits helps with this.

Of course, some people end up hugely in credit, but managed properly, and that includes being in credit by an amount equal to 1-2 monthly payments at this time of year, paying by regular DD frees people from having to pay for most of their annual cost between now and around February March.

Our Octopus predictor shows that our bills for December, January and February will come to almost £1k, while those in June, July and August will total about £300. We can manage the variation, but many would prefer to pay the same amount each month, and not have to pay another large bill at what can otherwise be an expensive time of year due to Christmas.

£250

I think I'll have used that by the end of March. I give a meter reading every month and check it regularly.

Ovo went through a stage of wanting to change my DD every week, so I phoned them up, pointed out that I'd managed my own bills successfully for 40 years and I really didn't need their help.

Haven't heard from them since 😀

Yes, Ovo are obsessed with recalculating the DD on what feels like a weekly basis: it’s too much! It’s too little! It’s just right! Wait, change it again! Just FUCK OFF.

Because if your bills are say, Mar-Feb
100
80
80
50
40
40
50
80
150
200
200
150
That last block, 700 in 4 months, is more than the other 8 months. It's a huge variation to put into a monthly budget. It means less cash in the run up to and just after Xmas. Lots of people can't just absorb that. Lots of people don't want to have a

Don't want to have to have a Power Pot and pay a £50 bill plus £80into savings then in the winter pay £50 from the bNl and withdraw £150 from the power pot for what amounts, in interest, to very little financial gain

I’m in credit £519.49 and my supplier has just reduced my monthly payment to £77 a month. With the payment from the government (£67 a month for the next 4 months) my payment will be £10 a month! Not sure I’m happy with this but I will be moving house in the spring so hoping I can get through this winter on the low payment. I’m with Shell Energy.
I have reduced energy use though. I don’t use the oven these days (bought an air fryer) whereas it was on daily a year or so ago. I use an energy efficient lamp in the evenings.

You're unhappy at having to pay £10 a month?

I’m worried it’ll shoot up

You can look at your estimated yearly usage on your bill and divide by 12 to get an average monthly so you know what you should be paying when your credit runs out. The cap is going up by 20% in April as far as I know.

I have a prepayment meter for electric I have a budget and just put money on it at the start of the month and that does us.

With the gas I’m £588 in credit.They wanted to increase my direct debit in October and I asked them not to as I feel we pay more than we need to for the amount that we use, but I’m happy to have a bit of credit just in case. However they did it anyway which meant extra money went out of my account. I’ve had to phone them three times to try and sort this out and I ended up over £700 in credit. Today the guy on the phone said that since I’m in so much credit he will lower the monthly payment from January, I’m really hoping that it goes through as the lower payment but I’m not holding my breath. He also gave me a refund of the difference between what I should have paid and what they took out of the bank.
I don’t mind having credit in my account as it is a worry not knowing what will happen with prices. However I feel that I have too much credit but at the same time I don’t want to ask for most of the money back in case I then go in to debt.

We've just uploaded readings for the month. Our bill for both electric and gas is £365 for the month. Although we were on holiday for one week of that. About the same as last year. We are definitely being more careful now

I'done our and its jusr over £200 which is pretty much what Octopus had forecasted for us. We still have £300 in credit so that makes me feel more comfortable that the forecasting is pretty good.