MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
Currently been with British Gas for 11 months and was paying £102 a month but now they want £109 a month.
Checked on the app and I'm £273 in credit.
Anyone found it easy to get this credit back?
Aye, leave.
Don't pay monthly.
Can you just phone and ask them?
I'd have thought your balance should be pretty low at this time of year - just getting in to lowest consumption season, so highest credit should be about september/October, I'd say...
Don't pay, supply a meter reading, get a revised bill. Pay for what you've used rather than an estimate.
Use up your credit before paying again.
It's just an interest free loan to them, if you stay in credit, so where's your kick back?
Nowhere!
where’s your kick back?
Nowhere!
Not a kick back as such, but some tariffs are only available if you pay by DD, so there's that. Of course if marcg tucked his £102 per month away in a market-leading easy access savings account and then used it to pay quarterly he could be coining it to the tune of £3.06 per year. If the tariff stayed the same.
Aye, leave.
If only; I'm one of those smart arses that shops around and changes most years, but my tariff change is in June which if you pay by fixed DD to get the best deals is the time when I'm building up credit that then runs down when it's cold and the heating's on.
How can it be right that you advise both companies that you want to change, a date is arranged about 14 days in the future and on the day I email / phone / app in the readings. And then it takes 6 weeks for them to work out what your credit is and refund it.
In the meanwhile, you are also paying to the new company so you are building up the credit again.
And then in an extra sting..... I was told not to cancel my DD to the old co because they'd use that to process my refund. And in the meantime...because another month has passed they've taken another DD from it. So I not only have a credit balance that isn't being used because I no longer get gas from them but that's just been boosted by a further £86!!
When challenged - apparently it's because they don't know I'm in credit because although I called in the readings, they go to a different department that need to verify with new co which takes 6 weeks.
These aren't power companies any more, they're just investment companies that don't pay us any interest and work with a slush fund of our credit balances!
It's a piece of piss to get back. I overpay knowingly every month and claim back once a year from the supplier, we then use the excess for a treat etc. Having a big kettle on permanently in the garden is sometimes a bit hit and miss electric wise depending on use etc so that's the reason I pay plenty each month to make sure we receive no nasty surprises.
Or you could move to a supplier who gives you interest on the credit?
I am with 'Tonik' and don't really have a bad word to say. Third cheapest tarif I could find, easy enough to deal with online (slow to get through but good on the phone), and 3% interest on credit balance up to £1k. Is a better deal than I get from my bank.