buying petrol

Why is it that utility companies cannot offer, as standard, a DD of the exact cost of that period's (month/quarter) usage? Why can a lot of them only offer DD if you commit to a fixed amount per period, worked out by dividing your past year's usage by 4 (for quarterly) with a fudge factor on top to allow for changes in fuel costs? Often your only choices are: DD with fixed amounts, or pay by BACS/cheque of the exact usage.

When I last queried this, I was told that "most people want to pay a fixed amount" or else "our computers won't let us do DD with a variable amount per month/quarter". Both excuses sound like fluent bollocks ;-)

When I last had a house of my own, before I got married, I was told that my payments were leaving me in nett credit, averaged over a year, but trying to get the payments reduced so I was nett zero was a nightmare. And the only way I could get the overpayment refunded was to close the account - so when I did move house, I got a nice amount refunded.

I'm with Octopus (Electricity and Gas) and that's exactly what they do for my bill. Tell me what the charge is for the month and then take that amount by DD about 16 days later.

Exactly, if one can do it, all can.

Of course if you are disabled and on the edge of affording things, all the added security costs something and the cost of that is passed on to the punter. So indirectly the fraudsters are costing the rest of the public, money. I don't know about petrol, but certainly those of us who have to rely on taxis notice sudden increases in costs and a lot of the so called subsidised transport is now more expensive than paying on the nail, so to speak. Brian

That happened to me: raise the DD, loads of credit, refund it, raise the DD again. If interest rates go up to the point that it actually makes a difference I may do something about it.

Playing Devil’s advocate, you could just look upon this as power companies trying to help customers avoid a nasty surprise this winter as they’ll have built up a surplus over the summer.

Of course *we* can all manage our own budgeting but no doubt many customers on lower incomes might not have the ability to cope with bigger winter bills if they haven’t put money aside in the summer.

Tim

Rubbish - they take a fixed amount per month and recently have increased that amount! Perhaps you are on a green or other non-standard variable tariff which cost a lot more than what other Octopus customers are paying.

Virgin Mobile manage it with my phone bill (and have done for years).

It is not rubbish, I know how they charge and how I pay. I am on an October 2021 flexible tariff which does not cost a lot more then others. Electricity 28p/Kwh 28p/day, Gas 7.5p/Kwh 27p/day.

I used to travel a lot on business. Sometimes the room was paid for on arrival, sometimes when leaving and food and drink always paid when leaving. Even with those where all the payment was on leaving, they normally only took the card details, but didn't charge anything to it.

I prefer a tariff that takes the same each month through the year, but all the providers do also offer tariffs where payment is each month or each quarter, for what has been used.

One I was previously with took an estimated payment each month and adjusted the following months estimate to correct for any (small) under or over payment for the previous month.

If you had ignored all the parasite fly by night companies this could have been your reward......