Direct Debits for Utilities

I'm with British Gas and wanted to change to Ovo but they were more than double my BG payment.

I pay all my bills on monthly DDs too, but I wish all were as fair as Ovo, my energy suppliers. They pay 3% interest on your credit balance, paid monthly and if you request a refund, which you can do online, it's in your bank account in a couple of days.

I expect we won't change either. It all works smoothly so why meddle? I just get fed up with the suppliers high handed attitude sometimes. If they want my money in advance and sitting neatly in their bank account they ought to be nicer to me, I think!

We pay all ours on monthly DD baring the tv licence which is quarterly, its hassle free and they always notify me if they are going to change the amount which gives me the option to agree or not. I can't imagine I'll be changing anything it suits us this way.

Oops, I meant to put monthly and not quarterly. I have never paid quarterly in my life- another senior moment.

It is getting very difficult to arrange quarterly payment by direct debit. All the comparison sites ask what form of payment I now use and then automatically quote on monthly payment. Some do not even do that I transferred to one company assuming that it was a like for like transfer, nothing suggested it wasn't - and got an email within minutes quoting my new monthly payment. I cancelled my transfer within if minutes of making it!

I'm not sure, they owe us quite a bit

But I suppose that will right itself as the winter goes on.

Thanks all. We've always paid by monthly direct debit and I've never minded if the balance was a bit in either direction but these days the companies take it for granted they can change the amount without real justification. We got our water bill today and on the last one (six months ago) they reduced our monthly payments by a pound. This time they've put them up by eleven pounds. The reason seems to be they've put their charges up recently so we've got to hand over more just in case. Perhaps we ought to go back to paying a quarterly bill (by DD of course) and paying what we owe rather than just handing it all over like highway robbery.

You can ring them Mollie and ask for the money back if you have a large credit balance.

'nod'?! end

There should have been a question mark at the nod of first sentence. Didn't mean to tell you what to do! Just make a suggestion

Time to 'ditch and switch* mollie. We did, a few months back. Now we seem to owe them money. They did ask if they could up the monthly payments, but I ignored 'em.

I was under the impression that paying quarterly by direct debit was the easiest and cheapest way to way and as others have said, once it is set up, one does not have to worry about it.

I mean paying monthly in advance rather than paying a quarterly bill? I've always done it, taken it for granted, but we seem to have a lot of credit on everything and still the payments go up to suit the supplier. Just wondered if it was still the popular way...

I pay quarterly by direct debit. It means I do not get the hassle that inevitably seems to go with monthly payments but have all the convenience of having the bill paid without any effort on my part.

Cheaper and saves having to remember to pay

Definitely, surely?

Yes as jing says.

I think so. You get a bit of money off don't you? And it's taken care of without having to think about it.