I have a direct debit account for my gas bill bla bla bla. Now I had a conversation with them on 5th Feb and was informed of the rates ie first lot of gas charged at x amount and thereafter at y amount. I now get my bill for this quarter and the x and y amounts are higher than what was stated in my conversation of the 5th Feb. So from the 6th Feb they have applied a higher charge.
This is just one of many inconsistences I have disputed with them. They also have informed me my direct debit will be increased....like hell it will, I will decide what I pay not them!
The Direct Debit aspect depends on your agreement. If it is a variable one, then they charge what they say you owe. If it is a fixed one, then you control it. As for the change in rates, go for it! Make as much noise as you can.
Davey, fortunately I have the date ,time and persons name I had the conversation with regarding my DD. This year they have reimbursed around £60 for supplying incorrect info to me and I aint finished with them, not by a long way.
Does anyone have a link to where I can check the daily/average calorific values for a given period as I suspect this is another area they can fudge the bills to their advantage.
You control it full stop. Just Contact your bank (counter, phone, online) and cancel the DD. That almost invariably makes the affected company sit up and take notice within days...
I'm currently having a "problem" with an upgrade on Orange, they haven't applied the tarrif that they offered online to my account. The offer that I accepted, they sent the free upgarde phone for and allowed to be enabled on their network. It was almost a "to good to be true" offer so I took print outs of the "order summary" and "thanks for your order pages" that detail everything. B-) Those pages say they will contact me if there are any problems/changes to the order, I've not been contacted over any chnages/problems...
If the next bill isn't right (tarrif and refunds that will be due) I'll stop the DD and pay manually with what the correct amount should be (on going charges/use less refund due) and continue to do so until they get it right. I don't think they have even a little toe to stand on if they tried to take me to court.
Some utility accounts are only available with DD and often they attract a discount of 5%.
Cancel the DD and you may be deemed to have changed your account and subject to the £30/50 penalty, per fuel, for changing your account within the minimum contract period.
But it signals that they are going to be paid by an "expensive" method like a cheque in the post or they aren't going to get paid at all. It's the latter that makes 'em pay attention.
I was with BG. You can have en email/online account where:-
They send you an email wanting meter readings You fill in meter readings on line. They send you an email saying how much you owe. You ring them up with credit/debit card. (You can type everything in on the telephone keyboard).
It was quarterly. Debit cards are cheaper than credit cards.. You get an on line discount plus another for prompt payment. But you have control.
Eon was cheaper than BG at that time so I moved. They have almost the identical arrangement.
The penalty charge is slowly disappearing and any way stopping the DD is to stop them taking more money from you until the dispute is sorted out. The point is to make them contact you and the chances are the person who does that will have the authority to get things done. Unlike the average "customer service" tellytubby whe you call them.
"I will decide what I pay not them!" That's part of the DD mandate contract that you have with the as long as you manage your account properly and without any outstanding long-term debit amounts.
I have had notification of an increase/decrease on my monthly DD gas payment at least once a year over the last few years - and when I have queried this on the odd occasions (last one this week [1) I have *never* had any problems with them changing it up or down when I request them to do this.
[1] They dropped the amount this time because payments were slighly more than gas usage - but as I wish to build up a small reserve, I simply told them to put the DD back up to my previous amount - and the response was "yes Mr Cashmore, no problem, this will take effect from next month". During this telephone conversation, I was also told that the reason for the frequent alterations are that they now run checks on DD payments against gas usage twice a year in an attempt to avoid large 'nasty' suprprise rises for their customers.
Many utility contracts include a variable DD amount and the contract you agreed to probably includes this. It is in your interest to get the problem sorted. Two reasons not immediately obvious are that if you cancel the DD you may lose the discount for paying by that method. Secondly cancelling a DD means just that and if you then want to use that method you have to set up a new one.
Nothing to do with the large fine they may get if they deliberately continued to take too much on DD so that the customer was many 100s in credit at the end of the year.
Do you have a citation for that? I don't need it, as I submit readings and pay the bill that results, but it would be good to have a reference for overcharging fines.
Don't know about the fines - but when they've owed me a couple of hundred pounds in the past [1], unprompted by me, when I received the last bill of the payment year, they would always offer the choice of a refund of the excess or leave it in the account and reduce my monthly DD payments , and I presume that's still the norm today.
I suppose problems such as that arise because many customers don't really understand how the monthly DD system really works and at the end of their payment year, they don't realise that they can ask for a refund *and**or* a reduction of their monthly DD payment to a level that justs pay the bill.
A bigger problem arises when the meter reader is unable to gain access to a property for a long period and undervalued estimated bills are produced with the customer then ignoring (for whatever reason) to supply the correct reading over the 'phone and their account then becomes massively underpaid. To rectify this, BG increases their DD to a high monthly payment to claw the amount back and the customer is then not in the financial position to bear the extra costs. [2]
[1] That was before the silly prices of today and when my yearly gas bill (including cooking and heating), was around the 250 mark! Ah, those really were the days.
[2] Many years ago, before my wife an I retired, BG meter readers (when they were then actually employed by BG) were unable to gain access to my property for around eighteen months for meter readings - and even though I would supply the correct reading each quarter, they sent me a letter telling me that if they couldn't gain access on a certain date, they would obtain a court order to force entry to read the meter - I wonder if they do that now?
Now at the moment, I owe BG a small amount on the winter bill but my electricty company owes *me* around 130 (I would prefer it the other way around, but that's life)
Well current thinking around here is that they are a bunch of idiots who don't know what they are doing or even what their own charges are. I had a cold call from them the other day despite being on the tps list and they seem to think its fine to ignore this as my number is on the electoral roll, like hell it is. Brian
I had the letter once demanding access to read the meter or they would send someone round to break in to get it. This was despite the fact that it was behind an unlocked shed door, with those for the four other flats in the same building. They apologised when I pointed out that their meter reader must have had his glasses on backwards. At one time, I complained that the meter seemed to be reading too fast, and they came and exchanged it, tested it, found it was faulty, and gave me a refund.
I had a similar situation. I lived alone and they kept sending meter readers while I was out at work. As it came up to two years, they "demanded" access. I asked them to send a reader in the evening or at the weekend, they insisted that they didn't do visits then! I told them that I was having a day off in three weeks and they could come then. They agreed a morning visit - which apparently was any time up to 1:00pm !!! I waited in 'til quarter past, as I'd actually taken the day off to do stuff and needed to go out, they left a note at half-past!
For that failed effort, they cancelled the demand to see the meter and paid me £10 for a missed visit. They were supposed to knock it off my next bill, however they failed to pay it for three successive quarterly bills and finally resorted to sending me a cheque!
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