"Richard" wrote in message
...

Hi Mary

In her previous (single) existence my wife paid her elec bill by DD. the
provider increased her payments until she was £150 in credit and refused
to refund the overpayment. She was only able to recover the money by
moving house.

That's never been my experience but I can only speak for myself. It does
surprise me though. And I suspect that closing the relevant bank account
would have done the job, it would have been less drastic. Perhaps she was
moving house anyway of course :-)

We pay _nothing_ by DD!

I pay as much as I can by DD - it saves me having to remember and I get no
red letters :-)

If I had a bad experience I'd probably think differently.

Last year our electricity company wanted to increase our payments because of
higher 'wholesale' costs. Now I know this could cause a lot of controversy
and I have no intention of involving myself in it. I telephoned and said
that I wasn't prepared to pay more because we had taken steps to reduce our
usage in the last three months. After I explained what they were the company
said that my payments would be reduced, they were and I'm still a lot in
credit so at the end of that annual period I'll contact them again and
expect another reduction.

Something similar happened with the water company.

The fact is that DD is easy and secure, it is used confidently by millions
of people for many purposes and with happy results. Nothing's perfect and
the odd unhappy exception will occur with any system but that doesn't make
the system bad in itself.

Mary



Richard