On Fri, 17 Mar 2006 20:59:11 -0000, "Mary Fisher"
wrote:
It's swings and roundabouts. BG - and (I believe) other utility
companiesdon't deliberately overestimate.
Mary
Are you sure, Mary?
Of course I'm not SURE. I said that I believed that. Nobody can be sure- not
even you.
I've experienced that with BG, Npower and Powergen, sometimes to the
tune of 20% overpayment over the billing year.
Serves you right for switching and not keeping a stable record!
These were each over a period of a couple of years, so there was a
pattern.
I'm not in the business of lending money to utility companies -
especially not at zero interest.
I therefore have two simple rules
1) I don't allow them to set the direct debit amount or to change it.
There are a few who will do so as a matter of course. I won't do
business with them.
You have the choice.
2) I calculate the next year's usage as being the same as the past
year's usage, apply any price increases and work out a projected cost.
I then offer them no more than 85% of that spread over the year, thus
pretty much guaranteeing that I owe them money at the end of the year.
Finally, I carry forward the shortfall into the next year and factor
that into the cost and offer no more than 85% again.
That means that you're not paying what you owe. That's no fairer than paying
more.
I pay what I owe, it's simply a little later than the normal billing
period. If they paid me interest on overpayments at the end of the
year, then I would have no problem in overpaying them early.
Unfortunately they don't.
I sometimes get squeaks from them and they have to go and get approval
from the supervisor. A couple of times I've had to discuss with the
supervisor. However, they are often on bonuses or targets for
customer retention. I only once met with a refusal to co-operate,
and that company lost the business.
I have never had that problem. But I suspect that my attitude isn't the same
as yours.
Well.... if I hadn't found this overpayment practice happening
consistently, I wouldn't have bothered to make an issue of it.
However, the amounts were quite large and no offer of interest on the
amounts was made. Therefore, I think that it's perfectly reasonable
in a subsequent year to underpay them for a period in order to recover
the lost interest. Taken over a period of a couple of years it works
out evens.
--
..andy
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