On Sat, 23 Aug 2008 12:35:43 +0100, Colin Wilson wrote:

AFAIAA you don't loose access to the suppliers helpline. I recently
spent a merry afternoon on the phone to Southern, Scottish & Southern
and Ebico trying to work out why the rates that Ebico sent at the last
price change were not the ones on my bills and the DD discount had
effectively gone.

Thanks for the heads-up, i'll have to keep my eye open for that one...

Your contract is with Ebico though, so you "should" only have to deal
with them for all billing issues...

Except that Southern issue the bills for Ebico... But Southern have no
control over how those bills are calculated (rates etc) that comes from
Scottish and Southern.

Anyway it boils down to the billing system being unable to cope with a
Direct Debit Discount of 0% (or perhaps different DD discounts depending
on the tarrif), so it has to apply the default 6%.

Ebico do not do a DD Discount so, if you pay by DD, the unit rates used on
the bill are raised by 6% which is the removed by the 6% DD discount that
has to be applied when you pay by DD.

The thing to check is what the rates are if you *don't* pay by DD, they
should be the published Ebico ones, not Ebico +6%.

--
Cheers
Dave.