I recently changed power suppliers to SP on the offer of £40 pcm payments (from £50).

First 3 months of usage: £158, i.e. £53 pcm. So they review the monthly payment, and change it to…..£87!!!

WTF??? Anyone else successfully challenged this? No doubt they've got it in the small print and I am f**ked, but some hope would be nice…

I gave up with I believe you mean Scottish Power?

I realised that what they were trying to do was get me up to about £300 in credit with them and my Direct Debit which had previously been around £50 a month was now around £93 a month!

I cancelled my direct debit and didn't have to pay a penny with them for nearly 10 months as I was so far in credit!! I now pay them via bank transfer as soon as the bill arrives and they don't tell you but they let you off upnto £40 a year by paying promptly. Its made a huge difference to my cash flow as now I'm back to the old days where I use the electricity then pay for it afterwards. Its so much better! I always make sure they get my proper meter readings and so far its made our lives better off to the tune of £500.

Scottish Hydro have been very good. We had a dd for £50 a month, but we were out of the property for 7 months over the summer and worked up a credit of over £350. They refunded it without me even asking for it. Recommended.

I got into nearly a £1000 in credit with Scottish Power and it resulted in them sending me a cheque for £700.

They're explanation was my online tariff wasn't correctly set up so the £95 pcm for duel fuel online tariff wasn't correct. They then dropped my monthly direct debit down to £60 so I was pretty happy.

Im on a deal that I need to enter my own readings so I was a couple of days late putting them in so they email an estimated bill and guess what my monthly direct debit shoots back up to £95 pcm.

I live in a 1 bedroom flat with fairly new energy efficient gas central heating system so £95 pcm is ridiculous. I signed into a fixed pricing tariff a few years ago which expires in 2011 as Martin ¨MoneySavingExpert¨ Lewis advised it. due to higher energy prices.

They're all useless. Npower tried to up our DD to £107 pcm after they screwed up our bills by charging us in £/m3 when the meter read in ft3! Unsuprisingly we cancelled our DD and now just pay the bill when it comes through.

This thread has made me phone Scottish Power up and it turns out my direct debit should be £51.40pcm instead of the £95pcm they have been currently charging me.

They're excuse was that my gas and electricity were out of sync in the billing periods even though its a duel fuel tariff and I enter my meter readings at the same time.

Just switched to a BG dual fuel tariff where I give them monthly meeting readings – gives them more opportunity to even out the charges over a year and me more control over what I build up as a credit in the summer.

I do as PePPeR, seems to be the way to go. Log on and pay online for each bill, after updating the meter readings. Get a few quid off each time for prompt payment.

EON here.
Just before Xmas '08 my dual-fuel bills went from £77 pcm to £104pcm!
Had to pay this for three months then they dropped it to £88pcm. Dropped again to £58pcm and then i had a new A-rated combi boiler & double glazing put in.
Sent them a meter reading cos their estimate was way off & it turns out i'm £261 in credit – which is nice when on the dole!
Hopefully my new boiler etc. should reduce my gas bill by about £20 per month…

Is the amended price on actual meter readings or estimated, that may be why they have hiked it up.

I've just had this discussion with EON. They were trying to get me to drop the DD to £70 pcm, but I reckon this will not be enough. They've let me set my own, higher, value.

When i first moved into my house Scottish power tried to bill me for £4500 of gas they had the wrong and non existant meter!

SP are possibly the post incompetent company I have ever dealt with. Over the past 4 years, they have:

1) Failed to bill the previous tenants in a shared house, and tried to get £1700 out of us. This was despite someone regularly coming round to read the meter. This went on so long we got Energywatch involved, and took about 18 months to solve, by which time we were moving out ourselves.

2) In addition, we were on pre-pay electricity, and managed to rack up £800 in one year as credit. They eventually refunded this after more threats from energywatch.

2) Once they sorted that out, they then managed to fail to change the names on the bill for the next 18 months…

3) At a different property, provided an extortionate estimated bill, 5 days after the meter was read

4) Rang me up on three separate occasions to get me to pay a bill that wasn't due

5) Sent me a red bill before a normal one for my final payment

6) Now refuse to acknowledge that they supply my last property, when my ex-landlady (she moved back into the last property I rented) moved back in. She's still had no success 1 month later!

Absolute idiots of the highest order. The worst part was the dual fuel bit, where they wouldn't use the excess in the payg elec to pay the gas, and refused to ever put you through to someone high enough up who could look at both elec and gas a/cs.

UPDATE:

Got an email today from a nice lady at SP. She's keeping my payments as they are and has found £15 from a previous account that had not been refunded to me!

I live in an all-electric (Storage Heater) flat that averaged £42 per month over 2 years .. then in the 3rd year my company wanted to put it up to £78 pm. The only reason I could think was because they didn't like me owning them in the winter .. but preferred my summer credit balance instead.

This being Ecotricity .. supposedly a company with more of a conscience.

I promptly canceled my DD. They tried a little eco-blackmail telling me I'd waste more paper .. in fact I still got a quarterly statement on DD so it's absolutely no difference in paper.

If I want to spread payments, usually during the winter months because I'm naff at budgeting around Jan and Feb when al the bills come I now have a separate bank account set up with no cash card or anything (only online transfers) which I pay into regularly as an SO and earns me [a tiny amount of] interest. Then when the bill comes through I pay online within 24hrs.

It's not worth DD anymore especially since it was ruled that DD's can't get a discount anymore, except maybe a small one off.. it's just free money to them earning interest during the summer months.

Same with Southern Water .. when I first moved in they expected me to pay £360 per year for my 1 bed flat… so got a water meter .. it now averages £180, though I do follow the 'yellow is mellow' rule.