On 26/03/2021 21:34, NY wrote:

I'd like to see OfGem get involved to prohibit budgeted bills and force
companies to charge (by installments or lump sum, as the customer
prefers) what has actually been used.

This may happen when everyone has a (working) smart meter. What happens
when the companies have to rely on customer readings and they are not
provided, perhaps because of holidays, or hospitalisation, or just
laziness or stupidity?

Or if that is impossible, to
mandate that they must correct for any overpayment (by under-charging
you for one month) no less often than once a year.

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/system/file...t_feb_2019.pdf

All the "horror" stories that get high profile attention seem to be
about people who seem to be incapable of reading their own meter for
years on end and incapable of reading their own energy bills. In some
cases "I've never had a bill in 3 years" but have never bothered to
question why.

Then there are the estimated 2 million people in arrears with their
energy usage payments who may be just ignoring requests for meter
readings and complaining about the higher DD payments being requested to
make up previous shortfalls.

Many of the smaller, and cheaper, suppliers want the DD payment in
advance, including Avro (my current supplier), and this may because of
the number and cost of bad debts in the industry. Presumably if my DD
payment doesn't get honoured before I use any energy the cheap energy
contract has been broken and the tariff changes to the more expensive
"standard" rate.

Some companies may be better than others with payment amounts and I've
had on-line accounts where I could adjust my own DD payments on-line
(within limits) to match the actual consumption for that month or to pay
an average based on annual consumption. I didn't stick with that
supplier because at the end of contract they were one of the more
expensive in the market place.




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