Ofwat should take a look at water companies too. Thames Water are putting my direct debit up 66%, justified with a predicted 22% increase in water usage from last year. Even though they haven’t bothered to read my water meter since last March so they’ve invented both number themselves.
Call and be taken off DD. I did it with bulb and submit meter readings monthly so I’m only getting billed what I’m using. I have 200+ credit and they wanted to jack up my DD.
Fuck that noise.
Ofgem are absolutely useless at protecting the customer but pretty good at shielding the providers in my experience. Probably because they know where their next job will be. Bulb billed me for 32 months of usage, despite the fact I’d been paying by direct debit and built up £1000 of credit. When I appealed to the ombudsman they agreed with Bulb and calculated I’d used £1500 in the last 12 months and £247 in the 20 months prior to that (the back billing period), a sum that barely covered the standing charge. Now Bulb is demanding three times my average monthly bill as a direct debit. They should open a bank.
Is this really a problem? Isn’t it just at the end, an averaging? You pay more you get in credit and pay less later.
I work as a bank call centre operator; I must have had fifteen people this week calling to say they’ve been overcharged by their energy supplier, and that said supplier has told them to ring us to fix it (direct debit indemnity claims are generally quicker than the supplier refunding their customer). I’d never had a call like that prior to the start of this month. I had one customer in tears because they just couldn’t afford these price increases, and then the supplier charged them more than they should be paying and earlier than they should be paying it. This was just two weeks into the new price cap.
I’ve had to get my line manager to enquire as to whether we’ll be increasing the scope and size of our financial difficulties advisory team, because this is only going to get increasingly common and worse. At present we frequently have to suggest customers speak to debt charities, but the person I mentioned above has been calling them daily and been completely unable to get through.
Scottish Power Estimate = 2400 a year and if I fix its 5 grand.
The usual “operation rip off the old and demented” . CRIMINAL
>“However, some suppliers have been using these balances to prop up their finances, enabling them to follow more risky business models with reduced financial resilience and higher likelihood of failure. If that supplier becomes insolvent, the cost of replacing those balances has to be picked up by other suppliers and ultimately all energy consumers.”
Almost like the free market approach isn’t working. I wonder how that could have happened /s
I declined the increase (of over 150%) and went for the lowest they’d let me. Such opportunism is disgusting greed.
I have a economy 7 meter for storage heating. They haven’t read the meter for years and wouldn’t except my meter reading because they thought it was too low. In the end they believed me when I sent photos. Right now I am over £1000 In credit at the end of winter. But they are holding it to reduce variability or something and have just increased the DD.
People are dumb. They think that because their bill in April is less than their DD that they are being scammed. Not that they will need that built up credit for the forthcoming Winter.
Bills are going up again in october arent they, might be worth building up some credit now, who knows what the cost of livings gonna be like next winter
There’s two issues in play here – one is the seasonality of usage and the other is the price cap.
Seasonality of usage is pretty simple – over a 12m period people use more energy in the winter and less in Summer, thus on an equal DD budget plan they build up a credit over the Summer which is then extinguished over the Winter period.
The wrinkle comes when energy companies can see ahead to the next cap period and estimate what the new max tariff will be. This is quite easy at a wholesale level using the futures market, and obviously crystallises as the cap period becomes closer.
So the situation for suppliers is that they can see prices are going up from a wholesale POV, but they are not going to be able to build up a cash surplus during the summer at the new rate. Thus there is alot of concern in the industry around the coming Winter and potential liquidity issues. It wouldn’t surprise me if some suppliers are being forced to overbill in advance to try to manage the CF issue.
Companies like Direct Debits because they are in control of when and how much is taken from your account. A Direct Debit is you giving them permission to decide how much to take. All they have to, realistically do, is inform you. Which they do by sending you a bill. If they estimate that you owe £1,000 then they can Direct Debit £1,000. The other possibility is to set up a Standing Order. The Standing Order is you instructing your bank to send a supplier a particular amount on a particular day. If you decide to send £1,000 then that is up to you. Yes, you might need to manually change a standing order and Energy companies become upset about that. The other option is to submit manual readings and only pay on the generated bill. All of the options that are to your advantage are more expensive for the Energy Supplier – but if they do not like the business they are in they can get out.
Wait, since when did £billion profit making companies need a ‘safety net’?! Oh noes, the CEO might not get his £xx million bonus this year! Thoughts and prayers!
Not that it’s an excuse for energy companies to be doing this, but in the olden days you could change the amount of your DD online(at least with some suppliers)?
15 comments
Ofwat should take a look at water companies too. Thames Water are putting my direct debit up 66%, justified with a predicted 22% increase in water usage from last year. Even though they haven’t bothered to read my water meter since last March so they’ve invented both number themselves.
Call and be taken off DD. I did it with bulb and submit meter readings monthly so I’m only getting billed what I’m using. I have 200+ credit and they wanted to jack up my DD.
Fuck that noise.
Ofgem are absolutely useless at protecting the customer but pretty good at shielding the providers in my experience. Probably because they know where their next job will be. Bulb billed me for 32 months of usage, despite the fact I’d been paying by direct debit and built up £1000 of credit. When I appealed to the ombudsman they agreed with Bulb and calculated I’d used £1500 in the last 12 months and £247 in the 20 months prior to that (the back billing period), a sum that barely covered the standing charge. Now Bulb is demanding three times my average monthly bill as a direct debit. They should open a bank.
Is this really a problem? Isn’t it just at the end, an averaging? You pay more you get in credit and pay less later.
I work as a bank call centre operator; I must have had fifteen people this week calling to say they’ve been overcharged by their energy supplier, and that said supplier has told them to ring us to fix it (direct debit indemnity claims are generally quicker than the supplier refunding their customer). I’d never had a call like that prior to the start of this month. I had one customer in tears because they just couldn’t afford these price increases, and then the supplier charged them more than they should be paying and earlier than they should be paying it. This was just two weeks into the new price cap.
I’ve had to get my line manager to enquire as to whether we’ll be increasing the scope and size of our financial difficulties advisory team, because this is only going to get increasingly common and worse. At present we frequently have to suggest customers speak to debt charities, but the person I mentioned above has been calling them daily and been completely unable to get through.
Scottish Power Estimate = 2400 a year and if I fix its 5 grand.
The usual “operation rip off the old and demented” . CRIMINAL
>“However, some suppliers have been using these balances to prop up their finances, enabling them to follow more risky business models with reduced financial resilience and higher likelihood of failure. If that supplier becomes insolvent, the cost of replacing those balances has to be picked up by other suppliers and ultimately all energy consumers.”
Almost like the free market approach isn’t working. I wonder how that could have happened /s
I declined the increase (of over 150%) and went for the lowest they’d let me. Such opportunism is disgusting greed.
I have a economy 7 meter for storage heating. They haven’t read the meter for years and wouldn’t except my meter reading because they thought it was too low. In the end they believed me when I sent photos. Right now I am over £1000 In credit at the end of winter. But they are holding it to reduce variability or something and have just increased the DD.
People are dumb. They think that because their bill in April is less than their DD that they are being scammed. Not that they will need that built up credit for the forthcoming Winter.
Bills are going up again in october arent they, might be worth building up some credit now, who knows what the cost of livings gonna be like next winter
There’s two issues in play here – one is the seasonality of usage and the other is the price cap.
Seasonality of usage is pretty simple – over a 12m period people use more energy in the winter and less in Summer, thus on an equal DD budget plan they build up a credit over the Summer which is then extinguished over the Winter period.
The wrinkle comes when energy companies can see ahead to the next cap period and estimate what the new max tariff will be. This is quite easy at a wholesale level using the futures market, and obviously crystallises as the cap period becomes closer.
So the situation for suppliers is that they can see prices are going up from a wholesale POV, but they are not going to be able to build up a cash surplus during the summer at the new rate. Thus there is alot of concern in the industry around the coming Winter and potential liquidity issues. It wouldn’t surprise me if some suppliers are being forced to overbill in advance to try to manage the CF issue.
Companies like Direct Debits because they are in control of when and how much is taken from your account. A Direct Debit is you giving them permission to decide how much to take. All they have to, realistically do, is inform you. Which they do by sending you a bill. If they estimate that you owe £1,000 then they can Direct Debit £1,000. The other possibility is to set up a Standing Order. The Standing Order is you instructing your bank to send a supplier a particular amount on a particular day. If you decide to send £1,000 then that is up to you. Yes, you might need to manually change a standing order and Energy companies become upset about that. The other option is to submit manual readings and only pay on the generated bill. All of the options that are to your advantage are more expensive for the Energy Supplier – but if they do not like the business they are in they can get out.
Wait, since when did £billion profit making companies need a ‘safety net’?! Oh noes, the CEO might not get his £xx million bonus this year! Thoughts and prayers!
Not that it’s an excuse for energy companies to be doing this, but in the olden days you could change the amount of your DD online(at least with some suppliers)?