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Quote: Originally posted by mintymonkeylove on 10/10/2014I've always paid all my utility, TV licence, insurance, council tax etc etc bills by direct debit and never had a problem in about 20 years.

Quote: Originally posted by Bob61 on 11/10/2014

Quote: Originally posted by mintymonkeylove on 10/10/2014I've always paid all my utility, TV licence, insurance, council tax etc etc bills by direct debit and never had a problem in about 20 years.

Things like the TV licence, insurance and council tax are not a problem paying by DD because they are a fixed annual fee just divided by 12 so you know how much it will cost every month and that monthly payment will pay the annual fee exactly.

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With things like the gas and electric and water meters your annual consumption is estimated by the company and then divided by 12 to determine the monthly payments. However, they have little idea and you probably have no idea what your annual usage will be but you can guarantee that the utility has over estimated by quite a large amount and so you are probably paying far more each month than your actual monthly usage.

By the end of the year you will be in credit with the company for sometimes over a hundred pounds. They don't normally send you a cheque for that but they will reduce your monthly payments the following year. However, they will over estimate again so you will always be in credit to the company. If you have lots of dosh to play around with you probably won't mind too much but your money is in their bank earning them interest when it could be in yours.

Just imagine, given all the customers they have, the millions of pounds that is 'borrowed' off the customers and earning the company a small fortune in interest while the customers are struggling to pay the inflated monthly bill and make ends meet.

However, that is a different issue to the car tax and under normal circumstances you would only be paying enough money each month to pay off the tax. The problem may (or may not) arise when you come to sell the car and there is a delay between you notifying the DVLC and the DVLC processing the paperwork and acknowledging that you have sold the car and stop taking money out of your bank account.

Post last edited on 11/10/2014 00:14:29

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Quote: Originally posted by mikegalagher on 11/10/2014And would any of us be happier if we underpaid gas then owed a big lump at the account year end?

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Quote: Originally posted by Bob61 on 11/10/2014

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Quote: Originally posted by mikegalagher on 11/10/2014And would any of us be happier if we underpaid gas then owed a big lump at the account year end?

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No but we would be happier if we only paid for what we used.

I pay my electricity on receipt of the quarterly bill and it does cost just a couple of pounds extra to do that. However, I have access to my account online and can send in my exact meter readings and pay in as little or as much as I like at any time so that when the bill comes it is fairly low. I am not sure that my utility allows quarterly payments by DD.

Before I changed to my present electricity company I was also paying on receipt of the bill but their estimate and charges were anything up to £100 more...a quarter!... than it should have been and I always had to phone them up and get them to send a re-adjusted bill based on my meter readings. If you are paying by DD you have no control over the amount they remove from your bank based on their inflated estimates, unless you work out your usage yourself and confront them with your findings.

However, if anyone wants to carry on blindly paying over the odds then they can just ignore my ramblings...the companies love people like that

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Quote: Originally posted by Bob61 on 10/10/2014

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Quote: Originally posted by mikegalagher on 10/10/2014Always a first time I suppose. Never had that yet in however many years of DDs.

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If you pay your utilities by DD they always take out more than you are actually using and then you have to argue with them to get them to drop the monthly payments...that was always my experience anyway.

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Quote: Originally posted by kimmie on 11/10/2014

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Is there a fee for paying by monthly DD. Usually find the organisation adds a few quid on each month for the pleasure of doing so, except utilities companies.

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Quote: Originally posted by kimmie on 12/10/2014

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If you don't do DD they charge you. If you do pay by DD you get charged.

Mrs Public just can't win.

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