Energy companies hold £8.1 billion of customers' money

That is why, except for the first year we were home owners (55 years ago), we have always paid the bills according to meter readings, quarterly and now monthly. The first year, at their insistence, we paid the gas company twice as much as we needed to out of a very tight budget, and at the end of the year we demanded the surplus back and went to ordinary quarterly bills.

We have a household bank account with a regular sum of money going into it every month, enough to cover all the bills and any build up of funds stays in our account and we get the interest. I think spreading bills evenly round the year with an energy company, is an energy company's bonanza and customer loss.

My account is pretty much zero balance at the end of April and that suits me fine. Pay monthly DD and indicates that my amount has been well assessed. No problem. No hassle. Great.

I absolutely refuse to pay for energy by direct debit. Read the meter once a month and pay when the bill comes in. Money in my bank not theirs. If you need to spread the cost you can do so by putting money into your own savings account.

We changed supplier this year and it took 3 months and lots of letters and phone calls to release the £750 we had overpaid