Winter energy bills rise for new OVO customers

Qexit, I cannot see how any of this makes much difference. I have paid using both methods you describe and cannot see how Scottish Power do things any differently. Over a 12 month period with them I started with a deficit after the first payment and the payments were reduced by 4% after 8 months when I was still in accrued deficit. It is now just 12 months from the beginning and I am about 2% in credit. This was pretty much how it worked with British Gas but Telecom Plus was rather more errant but their bills are a total mess anyway so they perhaps have as much difficulty making sense of the figures as do most of their customers. For the record (again) Telecom Plus boast of being cheap because of the way they run their business but I shall still be paying £200/year less next year than they wanted to charge me 4 years ago.

ronat42, I think you are missing my main point which is not surprising since I didn't put it across very well. The way Direct Debits should work are that you, or the power company, calculates how much gas/electricty you are going to use over a 12 month period to get a total bill for the year. This number is then divided by 12 to cover the bill but allowing the customer to pay the same amount every month regardless of the actual usage. Scottish Power do not use this method. They use a rolling 12 month period which allows them to increase or decrease the amount you pay every month rather than it being fixed. Had I allowed Scottish Power to stick to this regime, I would have been paying £25 a month extra out that I needed for other essentials including food. In the event, I forced them to maintain my monthly payment at the rate agreed when I joined them last November throughout the year. As a result, I have been able to afford to pay my utility bills and eat and I will be between £30 and £60 in credit at the end of the year. For the record, my bill for gas and electricity for a two bedroomed semi-detached house will work out at around £700. It was around £600 for the previous two years.

The comments made by Qexit are common ones but I beg to strongly disagree. I have paid by direct debit for as long as I can remember, probably since it was introduced as it seemed an ideal way of paying. During that time I have been with British Gas, Telecom Plus and finally Scottish Power. On all occasions I have been amazed at how close the payments worked out over 12 months, always less than 5% error albeit always leaving me in credit which is exactly how it should be as the payments are always taken one month after the supply starts. As far as investing for profits is concerned, the odd £50 might generate a pound or so over a year but that is far out weighed by the financial discount gained by using this method. I think that the lottery of tariffs is a far more important issue especially when, as in my experience yesterday, the company's service representative spent five minutes miscalculating my new payment to be a 50% increase when a 20 second comparison of the new tariff clearly indicated a simple 18% rise in price. Qexit's last comment is the only one which can be reasonably made although the credit/deficit situation may be a bit relevant depending what the starting date is. Starting at this time of year will lead to an early deficit whereas starting in late spring will have the opposite effect. What really annoys me is the near impossibility of getting a simple answer when it would only take one person an hour or so to calculate the real rate changes and produce a reference table to enable staff to give a quick accurate answer. One point of comparison is that we, as pensioners living in a roomy 4 bedroomed detached house and not particularly careful, paid £1000 last year rising to less than £1200 for the next 2 years so one does wonder if the "average cost" is worked out in a similar way to the fictitious "average wage".