Are you in credit with your energy provider? Worried there's been a mistake

[Mybobowler]

I fixed our energy price with eon back in September, just as everyone started getting the heebies about energy prices. I could only get a 12 month plan so I'm trying to think ahead to prepare for the inevitable shock come next autumn.

Direct debit for both fuels is £105 a month. Our house is a fairly badly insulated, small Edwardian terrace. Two adults, a toddler and a baby. Pretty average energy consumption for a small family; we've probably had about 4 hours of heat (gas) a day over this winter, plus the usual TV, washing machine, laptop etc. The house is rarely empty, so something is always on during the day.

For the first time in my life, I'm being really diligent with submitting meter readings every month. No smart meter yet, but having one installed soon. To my surprise, we're £150 in credit. I'm now worried that there's a mistake somewhere. Is it normal to be in credit at the end of the winter? Ideally I'd like to save up a chunky credit to cushion us against price hike next winter, but I'm now wondering of I ought to contact eon to query the bill in case there's been an error...?

We are, they’ve just nearly halved our direct debit because of it. I’ve checked the meter readings about 15 times to be sure but it seems right. I’m hoping that it means that when our fix finishes, we won’t go up above what we were paying before they reduced it, which would be manageable for us.
We switched last summer and I guess we just overestimated our usage, and then have been quite careful this winter, so those factors combined have given us the credit.

We fixed a couple of months before you. Possibly a bigger house, but more modern, so better I suiation, I'd guess. Similar monthly amount, but we'd need to compare price per unit to see how that relates to usage.
I've just reduced the monthly direct debt, and had £80 returned to the account. We are still in credit.

Oohh OK, so not impossible that it's correct! That's a relief. I'll pick over meter readings etc to make sure.

I'm really panicking about what our bill might go up to when our fix ends - especially having two tiny children, there's only so much we could reduce our use. I'm all up for extra layers and hot water bottles, but I grew up in a cold house (no heating, no money) and our winters were Victorian. Having some hefty credit on our account would make me feel a bit more secure.

It might be fine. We probably have a similar usage to you and were paying £94 pm and only just gone into debit and we were moved to a more expensive tariff when our supplier went bust last autumn, and we missed a month due to cancelling one DD and not setting up another straight away.

You should have estimated annual usage on your bill somewhere, or you can work it out from your last few bills, and you can find the April 22 prices online to work out the annual cost and hence what your monthly DD should be, but obviously it could increase by some more by next Autumn. I'm guessing for you, ballpark figure, £250-300 pm.

It sounds like a lot of suppliers are in the process of reviewing bills but if you're on a fix your payments might not change until you're closer to the end of the fix, but it might be worth putting some money aside now, as you are very likely to be paying a lot more come Autumn, unless the government imposes substantial controls on the price of energy, which is probably unlikely unfortunately.

We're £800 in credit, I need to cut our dd today,thanks for the reminder! We always are tbh,they insist well use more than we do but it never happens.