Just received my Gas Bill from British Gas.

[Roly]

That's what I do, but that didn't stop BG trying to rip me off.

[Clot]

Fortunately that's not happened to me, but please do spill the beans so that I know what else to watch out for!

[David Hansen]

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:57:24 GMT someone who may be [e-mail] (Roly) wrote this:-

I think that they believe those who have not left their old monopoly supplier are unlikely to take their business elsewhere and should be treated appropriately. It wouldn't surprise me if they have a box on their computer screens to this effect.

[Andy Hall]

I don't write cheques unless there is no alternative organisation from which to make a purchase. Last year I wrote two. This year, I hope not to write any. They aren't necessary and are a distinct disadvantage to the consumer.

Regarding energy bills and direct debits, I have a simple solution to avoid the game that the suppliers try to effectively get payment in advance and for a credit balance to be built. I don't lend money to utility companies.

I look over the previous couple of years of use on a monthly basis and price the consumption according to the selected tariff. I then offer the supplier a monthly DD to the value of 80-90% of this. Over the course of the year, there will of course be an underpayment and they will attempt to not only raise the DD to recover that, but also to try to secure a credit balance for the following year. I take the shortfall, add it to the following year's projection and offer them

80-90% of that or a switch to a different supplier.

That has only been turned down by one supplier. They are interested in customer retention.

[David Hansen]

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 08:28:49 +0000 someone who may be Andy Hall wrote this:-

Why?

[Dave Liquorice]

Why not simply contact her bank(*) and cancel the DD, that invariably gets the full attention of the supplier. Of course extracting the money after that may well still be "fun" but at least they aren't getting any more and don't have access to your account should they really start to mess up.

(*) Visit, write or do it online.

[Mike Clarke]

You might even be able to recover the money directly from the bank under the terms of the Direct Debit guarantee if you can convince them that the gas co. collected the wrong amount.

"If an error is made by the organisation or your bank or building society, you are guaranteed a full and immediate refund from your branch of the amount paid"

[Ed Sirett]

I'm trying to get my customers to pay either cash or by bank transfer. There is a significant minority of people who I can't get off cheques. I think I'll have to either offer a surcharge/discount for cheque/bank transfer. Alas I might even have to turn down customers who write cheques but I hope it won't come to that.

[Richard]

In what way are they a disadvantage to the consumer? Since BT started penalising me for not paying by DD I have stopped paying by credit transfer and send them a cheque.

In addition my Osteopath prefers to be paid by cheque - processing them costs him nothing whereas accepting credit or debit card payments does cost him.

[David Hansen]

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 18:40:54 +0000 (UTC) someone who may be Ed Sirett wrote this:-

Some potential customers might turn down suppliers who will not accept cheques.

[Ed Sirett]

I have more than enough customers. The cheques are often symptomatic of other backward ways like not expecting to pay labour rates of 50 years ago.

[Andy Hall]

- Because writing cheques is archaic.

- Because it usually involves an envelope with a stamp and posting it. Extra actual cost and implied cost in terms of time to effect the transaction.

- Because suppliers may not supply goods and services until cheques have cleared

- Because there is extra time between payment being made and being received. Depending on the banks, BACS transfers can be same day. I object to the banks making margin on delay in the transfer. I would rather keep the money in my account and transfer it immediately before the due day. Deliberately delaying a transfer of money to make margin is not a value add to the customer. I am happy to pay the bank for value added services, but that patently isn't one.

- Because requiring cheques indicates that the supplier is perhaps out of date with use of modern EFT and may have a similarly slow customer service attitude

- Because I have less consumer protection than if I user a credit vehicle for payment.

Those are six good reasons that I won't do business unless absolutely avoidable by means of a cheque.

[Andy Hall]

I agree completely.

Receiving them is even worse than writing them because one has to make a trip to the bank or use some other time consuming means to pay them in. Total waste of time, when one considers having to find parking and paying for it, the time taken queuing in the bank and all the rest of it.

[Andy Hall]

Probably not the ones that are wanted.

[Andy Hall]

You have substantially less legal protection than if a credit vehicle is used for payment.

Which costs you in time and effort to write and post.

Untrue. It costs him time to process and bank the cheques.

[Ed Sirett]

It's this which in reality is the downside to cheques.

[Tony Bryer]

BACS works fine most of the time but not all customers are equal to it. We print our BACS details on every invoice and some less than bright councils still write to us to ask for them. Others transmit the payments with a cryptic reference such as KLWN or Payments Account - fortunately we're small enough to be able to guess most of these from the amount.

[geoff]

Except that e.g. CityLink use ACL

... ACL (a pneumatics company who we use from time to time) are just around the corner from me

took a while to think that one through

[David Hansen]

On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 14:41:54 +0000 someone who may be Andy Hall wrote this:-

[snip]

You gave six reasons why a customer may not wish to use one.

My question was why a business would want to turn a customer away simply because of their preference in ways of paying.

[David Hansen]

On Sat, 01 Mar 2008 22:01:21 GMT someone who may be Tony Bryer wrote this:-

As we do. The best one was a large arm of government, which told us that they ignored anything of that sort printed on invoices, "because it is often wrong". They wanted us to send them a letter with the same information on it.