Scottish Power have changed my direct debit (up by £26 per month) without telling me, can they do this?

[Aimsmum]

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It should have been on your statement that it was going to happen from the following month or a later date.

Normally you build up credit in the summer & debit in the winter, but with this summer the way it's been, presumably you haven't been building up the necessary credit - so if the payments stayed the same, it wouldn't cover your winter use.
But, yes, you should have been told -I usually get a letter saying it's going to change.

Are you sure you haven't missed it on a recent bill/statement?

They don't exactly put it in capital letters.

NPower has just sent me a statement saying my gas bill will go down from £34 a month to £8 !!

Our boiler's been broken since April, so we haven't used any gas in 4 months. I can't help thinking that ZERO would have been nearer the mark!

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They did that to us, too. I can't wait to give them the boot.

Monthly payments are normally worked out using 18 months previous usage so probably based approx on Dec 05 - July 07

We had this, but for our gas bill, which i knew was way to high. So when we got our last bill which also was the same time as them changing
our meter. I phoned with an actual reading which reduced it down to about £11 per month from £26 per month and also cleared the outstanding amount on the bill and left us in credit with them.

So i would just suggest next time you get your bill just check the reading is correct, because ours was almost double what we were using.

I did this with both gas and electric and have saved us nearly £30 per month.