You don’t have to remember to pay your bill – going through all the bother of arranging to pay by cash or cheque. And you won’t have to join the queue at the bank or post office. Instead, if you set up a Direct Debit, an agreed amount will be taken from your bank account each month on the date of your choice. Modern life is hectic, paying by Direct Debit helps by removing the unnecessary hassle.
Budget Direct Debit is an easy way to pay for your energy and a good way to budget. Once you set up your Direct Debit, a regular payment amount automatically comes out of your bank account every month. This way, you spread the higher cost of winter across the whole year. It's good value too, as you get the lowest unit rate of all payment methods.
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Paying the whole amount each month by Direct Debit helps to ensure you're paying for what you use each month. It also helps you see how much energy you're using.
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Your monthly Direct Debit payments will be the same each month. However, we may increase or decrease the amount you pay to match your actual energy use over your billing period, based on actual meter readings when we receive them. We'll always let you know first of any changes.
We'll also do an annual review of your Direct Debit payments on or around the anniversary of when your Direct Debit was set up.
We’ll look at the amount you pay by Direct Debit on or around 12 months after it was set up, and then on each anniversary. This is known as your ‘annual Direct Debit review’. We might review it before this if, for example, we receive a meter reading, but this isn’t guaranteed. Where possible, we use any previous meter readings we have for you to determine what you're likely to use in the future. When it’s time for a Direct Debit review, we also take into account any outstanding balance on your account. We divide this cost into equal payments, which are spread across the plan.
Once we’ve completed your review, if we have an up to date meter reading and we find your account is in credit or in debit, we’ll usually update your monthly payment amount to spread the balance across the following 12 payments.
If you make any additional ’one-off‘ payments to us these will be taken into account at your next review.
After your annual review, if your Direct Debit needs to increase or decrease to match your estimated annual energy cost, we’ll let you know and make the updates to your account for you. If we carry out any ad hoc reviews then we’ll usually only make changes to the amount you pay if we think it needs to increase or decrease. We do this so that your payments don’t change too often and you continue to pay a regular payment amount.