I must be a rare consumer who has seen his energy costs go down. Our current deal, does not run out until August 23. Back in the spring Scottish power put up our direct debit by about £26 per month owing to excessive energy use. Last week they decide I was now paying too much and have reduced it by £22 so a net rise of £4 a month can’t complain at that. Anyone else had their DD reduced?
Richard
I'm with SP too and my DD went from £94 to £142 in January, then to £220 in March, then £188 this month, so it's now double what it was before. I'm not on a fixed price deal (obviously!) just standard variable tariff.
I think recent reports about customer gouging have caused a few companies to pre-empt their charge reductions. Last year I got a refund, and they almost doubled my standing order. WTF????
DDs are just a guestimate of usage and future rates. It's not unknown for them to be wildly out*, especially if you haven't been with the supplier for long. The monthly DD figure is mostly meaningless because the inputs to the guestimate are too variable for the formula to be good.
(when energy pricing was roughly static, they could learn your usage from one year to the next and set a budget plan via the DDs. Now that pricing is a lottery, they might predict your usage but they don't know where tariffs are going to be in 6 months)
There's been pressure for them to hold less credit on consumer accounts. They aren't reducing their prices, they're just applying less smoothing from summer to winter.
You might have noticed that energy prices went up last year...
Theo
mine too gas and lecy down from £150 a month to £90 a month since the last increase months ago...I don't get it....
But are they using actual readings, or estimates?
Do the DD's equate to your annual usage?
My last EDF bill was 1st March actual usage since then
E = 795 kWh @ 27.63p = £219.65 G = 198 kWh @ 7.28p = £14.41 SC = 139 days @ (44.75p + 27.72p) = £100.73
total £334.79 for which they've been raking £85/month so I'm £486 in credit, of which £61.75 was credit left over from the April bill, next bill due end of August I think
the monthly DD will give them £1020/year but martin wossname says my cost is £1739/year based on same usage as last year, so I expect they'll want to bump up the DD before too long.
Did your initial DD actually match your usage or did you build up a credit?
I think their software is buggy or poorly specified (or maybe they're just trying to persuade everyone to get smart meters). My DD is up and down like the working lady's underwear but I still overpay on a regular basis. Maybe not so much since the recent price rises.
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