[rant] The bastards at Eon have just kindly let me know that my monthly payment are going up by 200% in order to “protect me from getting into debt”. Nice try, your miscalculating has put me £416 into debit without knowing it – possibly a tad late there!

I thought OFFGEM hosed them all for this sort of thing a while ago? Apparently it had little effect

[/rant]

My direct debits were increased as we obviously werent in credit enough for npower, I cancelled the dd and waiting a few months before setting it back up again.

How middle class to pay by direct debit, us working classes always pay in cash, ever so easy, and we dictate when we pay the global consumer conglomerates.

Eon are tossers. They wanted £190 a month from us for a £205 quarterly bill.

we have gone from £80 a month to £130 a month for gas and ele, Thank Eon 👿

even forced me to do the unthinkable and setup a Twitter account just so I can moan at the them 🙁

In fact, I’ve now gone whole hog and got Nicky Campbell (or is it still Anne Robinson?) involved. Just waiting for Kofi Annan to call me back too

you can phone them up and arrange an amount that suits you based on previous usage/bills.

You can’t really blame them for wanting to charge you for the energy that you choose to use?

wwaswas – Member

You can’t really blame them for wanting to charge you for the energy that you choose to use?

They set the DD amount, not me. Therefore, their **** up. Happy to pay, but fixing their mistake to the tune of that sort of increase? I think not!

do you not monitor how far into ‘debt’ you’re getting during the year? Most energy companies only recalc DD amounts annually so if prices rise dramtically or your usage pattern changes the amount you need to chip in each month will increase.

wwaswas – that’s a crock, mine was reassessed quarterly, most quarters a “WTF?” email saw it get a little closer to reasonable.

that’s not my experience with lots of different companies but if it’s yours then I won’t call it a crock.

I only signed up in December with the promise of wonderful prices! This is the first statement I’ve seen from them. I’m fully aware of how the system works, one way or another they’ve made a total **** of it

Not switched for a while but probably need to when current offer finishes soon. If you only signed up with them 6 months or so ago what info do they use to set up the original DD amount – presumably you had to give them an indication of intended use or past bills…

I’d have a word – an increase is quite reasonable as you owe quite a bit but the next 4 or 5 months should be much lower usage so that’ll help reduce the debt in any case. Tripling you bill overnight is a bit much imo.

@wwaswas I certainly monitor my monthly usage and balance after ‘fun’ with EDF at the start of the year. Rather than the regular £80-ish for gas they took £600, having finally agreed the right reading with the previous supplier and rolled it into their annual review. I shuddered when I saw that whisked away.

I’m quite happy with First Utility. They email me a reminder each month, I log in and enter meter readings, they DD for what I’ve actually used.

I vastly overpay mine, but my tariff gives me one of my monthly payments back annually so it works in my favour. I also got a £500 refund because of the overpayment so I’m not complaining…

I haven’t read all the replies so this may have been covered already.

After the first three months with our energy provider they tried to bump up our gas by about the same amount as the OP. They sent out a letter prior to it going up so i called them and was told that the ‘new’ computer system automatically re-calculates the useage depending on the amount used to that date. When i stated the original monthly figure was claculated on actual yearly useage it became clear the computer cocked up as it estimated my yearly useage on the three coldest winter months. They changed the Direct Debit there and then and i got confirmation in the post 2 days later.

wwaswas

I am amazed, no astounded! that you can manage to type on a keyboard with your head 3 feet up your own arse!

I also got a £500 refund because of the overpayment so I’m not complaining…

You got your own money back and you’re delighted? You must be the easiest customer ever.

wwaswas

I am amazed, no astounded! that you can manage to type on a keyboard with your head 3 feet up your own arse!

Your first post for over a week and still being your usual ‘I’ll behave well on the forum and use it as an opportunity to promote my bearing supply business’ self?

I may have expressed my view in a slightly too strident tone but I do believe that the OP is only being asked to pay for energy they’ve actually used.

Do you let your customers pick their own prices if they don’t like the ones you charge after they’ve had the goods?

You got your own money back and you’re delighted? You must be the easiest customer ever.

If you read he whole of his post properly it looks like a brilliant saving scheme! His supplier gives you one months DD back in every 12 and allows through their incompetent you to over pay. At the end of the 12 month period they give you the overpayment with the extra months DD. That’s a (tax free) investment scheme of 8.3% – you are not going to get close to that in your average high street bank or building society!

Yeah you basically just need to phone them and tell them to lower the DD (although not in the OPs case as he’s been under-paying). I think I was £80 in credit at the end of last year and they wanted to increase my DD by 30%, I told them I bank with Natwest not them and to keep the DD the same.

OP in under paying so now need to overpay, discount not as big as expected shock.
Easier than ever to change supplier.
Vote with your keyboard.

Easier than ever to change supplier

Then they’ll want it all in one hit-probably what the OP is moaning about.
They want their money ASAP, you want to pay it back over a longer period.
tell them that and they may be a little more accommodating