Energy companies direct debits

[Broccers]

How do the fuckers expect us to pay their exorbitant bills when its so difficult to get hold of them to talk to them about anything?

Getting a gas meter installed by OVO today who are part of SSE. Engineer turns up this morning nice and early (should have realised that was too good to be true)... has a quick look and says "nah, can't touch that mate, its medium flow. I'm only certified to do low flow supplies."

Of course he can't just swap jobs with someone who is certified on medium flow and who is working in the same area, so it needs rebooked. Its only taken three weeks to get this far and I have a boiler install scheduled..

Called OVO who advised there's wait times of 20 minutes or so. An hour later I get through to a woman, explain what's happened and she explains she'll have to transfer me. "OK, but where are you transferring me to and can you stay on the line until...."

"Thanks for calling SSE home and broadband faults."

For the love of God....

Haha its just standard. I had a water meter fitted a year ago. They actually fitted it to next door. It took a whole year to successfully connect it the right supply after 2 attempts.

I did manage to contact Edf on twitter messages tho to get our bills switched from 6 monthly readings to 1. Each message took 2 days to respond but they did carry out the instruction eventually. Grateful for small mercies

[Simon]

How do the fuckers expect us to pay their exorbitant bills when its so difficult to get hold of them to talk to them about anything?

Getting a gas meter installed by OVO today who are part of SSE. <snip>

Other way around. OVO bought SSE's retail division a while back.

[Ascender]

How do the fuckers expect us to pay their exorbitant bills when its so difficult to get hold of them to talk to them about anything?

Getting a gas meter installed by OVO today who are part of SSE. <snip>

Other way around. OVO bought SSE's retail division a while back.

Two more hours on the phone last night... OVO think my account is with SSE, but SSE think its with OVO. Looks like the OVO letter I received has got SSE's phone number on it. So either its the wrong phone number or the wrong branding...

[Ascender]

Phoned SSE this morning...

"Good morning, OVO Energy."

Fucking hell....

[Ascender]

Why is the government £66 energy bill contribution just being given to everyone, regardless of income, tax status etc?

Feels a bit wrong that I'm getting this applied to my bills from today when it could be given to someone who really needs double the £66 at least just to get by.

Just me?

[Rich B]

Because it's another I'll thought out scheme that doesn't actually fix the problem, just punts it on down the road?

Stupid isn't it.

[Beany]

Because it's another I'll thought out scheme that doesn't actually fix the problem, just punts it on down the road?

Stupid isn't it.

This, and means testing it would likely be a bastard and take far too long to implement.

[Sundayjumper]

...means testing it would likely be a bastard and take far too long to implement.

This. Sounds like a good idea, but in practice you'll just end up with endless arguments from the people that don't have to implement it telling you you're DIW. The approach being taken is quick, it's not like you can ask winter to wait until it's sorted, and it's at least consistently unfair.

@Ascender - if you feel strongly you could donate £66/month to your local food bank. That would make a real difference to people.

[Ascender]

...means testing it would likely be a bastard and take far too long to implement.

This. Sounds like a good idea, but in practice you'll just end up with endless arguments from the people that don't have to implement it telling you you're DIW. The approach being taken is quick, it's not like you can ask winter to wait until it's sorted, and it's at least consistently unfair.

@Ascender - if you feel strongly you could donate £66/month to your local food bank. That would make a real difference to people.

I just thought there might be an opt-out option which could even have diverted funds to local food banks or something. I get that means testing isn't a clear or quick solution to anything, but had kind of naively hoped given the age of technology we find ourselves-in, there would be a clever way for the government (don't laugh) to have done something else.

@Sundayjumper - That's what we're planning to do, or to something similar. My wife has a few ideas from her recent placement as a district nurse.

[dinny_g]

Seeing as the HMRC have access to every household's gross income, that surely would be a simple measure.

But then again, the HMRC are rubbish - there's an Income threshold for Child Benefit but they can't even do that - you still have to declare yourself eligible or not.

[DeskJockey]

Seeing as the HMRC have access to every household's gross income, that surely would be a simple measure.

But then again, the HMRC are rubbish - there's an Income threshold for Child Benefit but they can't even do that - you still have to declare yourself eligible or not.

When I asked I was told that despite being over the threshold I could still claim the full amount. I'd just have to pay it all back. And if I hadn't registered for it to say that I didn't want it it could cause issues when the children were to get their NI numbers. I don't understand the logic of reasoning behind any of that.

[Simon]

And if I hadn't registered for it to say that I didn't want it it could cause issues when the children were to get their NI numbers. I don't understand the logic of reasoning behind any of that.

Whoever told you was at best, misinformed.

You can register (and not have the child NI number issue) but still opt not to claim the actual benefit. That's what we did.

Some people are well to claim and pay it back in case their situation changes and their income does fall below £50k/£60k as you can't retrospectively claim having not done so.

[Broccers]

Our 66 quid is going towards the over inflated bill.

[Beany]

My £66 was automatically put to the bill by my energy supplier, which I guess is the default behaviour if you don't indicate otherwise and have a dual fuel tarrif?

[John]

Same here, it's paid our electricity bill and left us £2.50 in credit.

[drcarlos]

Called our supplier and have asked to be moved to the old skool method of payment where they send us a monthly bill and we pay it. We have then decide how much of the credit we burn each month rather than them.

[tim]

So Bulb has been aquired by Octopus. I hope this doesn't mean I lose my variable direct debit that just takes whatever the bill is without trying to guestimate future usage.

Although I did notice this morning as I was trying to submit a gas reading that somehow a "customer reading" that wasn't me has appeared on my account midway through october, fully 800 units below the previous one. So fuck knows how they've managed that.

[JonMad]

Manage to convince Scottish Power to pay me my credit balance and reset my DD to what I think it should be for the next 12 months. So I might get away with being in debit with them until next summer, rather than in credit.

[Broccers]

Well our October bill is way less than half their made up massive figure for the DD.

[drcarlos]

It seems our smart meter is FUBAR. We had 3 spurious reading for this month where Shell estimated it seems that we'd use around 7000kw/h of gas in a day resulting in an estimated bill of 3k!
We've now discussed with them that it's broken, they agreed as they hadn't seen it online since early October and before that once in early September. You'd think they'd write to us wouldn't you? Anyway they can't get an engineer to us until early January so we've given a manual reading for now and will have to once a month. Hopefully resulting in the wiping out of the ridiculous spikes.