On Thu, 4 Jan 2007 09:57:07 -0000, Mary Fisher wrote:

snip

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

AOL.

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

Well, it definitely pays to keep an eye on what's going on with the bank
and all the various utilities. I suspect that's one of the main reasons why
people complain when it all goes wrong, coz they just don't keep a watchful
eye on what's happening.

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.

That works as long as you get someone sensible and who understands just
what it is you're trying to tell them at the other end. Unfortunately the
peanuts and monkeys syndrome is too well established at many large company
call centres. Took me quite a while and a considerable amount of angst to
get to someone who could sort a problem I'd been having with my electricity
supplier.

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.

As I said above though, it's not an arrangement that should just be signed
up for and then forgotten. The customer needs, it could be argued has a
duty to keep tabs on things. I certainly wouldn't leave large institutions
to have free and completely unmonitored access to my money!

--
the dot wanderer at tesco dot net