Direct Debit

The very best of luck with Scottish Power. Here is the address of the person you will probably need:

You authorised your previous supplier to make direct debits in respect of payments for services. Such direct debit authorisation stays in force until you cancel it.

But if they make a mistake or if you dispute that taking the DD was correct then you go to your bank and invoke the terms of the DD guarantee and get the money credited back in your bank account and let the bank and the originator sort it out between them . ...Thats how it works and if it didn't then no-one would use DD's as they could not trust the guarantee.

But they don't appear to have made a mistake, in the OP's case. He owed them the DD amount, plus 5p apparently.

He seems to be complaining that they only took the monthly amount and not the actual closing balance that they could have taken by DD.

He could have cancelled the DD before that monthly payment was taken.

He could have instructed the bank to reverse the DD as he didn't consider it authorised. They would have done so, irrespective of whether it was authorised or not.

But, IME, it is normal for utility companies to continue to use their DD authorisation right up to and including the closing balance.

Even with the current price decreases by some suppliers, because we signed up to then SWEB via a comparison site to their online deal (better rate via comparison site) a couple of years back, they have always been the cheapest over the last couple of years, even today they are quite a sum cheaper than the now next cheapest.

I take it you had either signed up less than around 16 months ago, or you hadn't taken their comparison site online deal, otherwise switching would work out dearer.

I can not see that EDF have done anything wrong, you were set up with them using DD, they have taken their payment by DD.

The great thing now is that if you have online banking you can cancel a direct debit at any time. Your bank ask that you inform the company involved but the direct debit is cancelled from when you do it. Moral, if you are going to change, cancel the direct debit with your old company instantly, let them calculate any amount owing either way and then settle it by phone or cheque, don't give them the chance to keep taking money from your account.

Scottish Power will certainly keep using estimated amounts even if readings have been taken by their representatives (this has happened to us too) but, you can submit a reading yourself online or by phone at any time and that will usually be used rather than estimates. Why they waste our money employing meter readers if they aren't going to use the information is anyone's guess!

mister smith wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Its your money! Call, or write to your bank, telling them to stop the DD immediately. A bank can only make payments on your behalf, which is all a DD is, if they believe it to be authorized by you.

Quite.

They sent a letter to me requesting a new reading. I sent it back on the slip provided in the post.

Then I got another letter, exactly the same several weeks later.

Then I missed several of their calls. So, I phoned in and gave my latest reading after trying in vain online (that part of the site was down) for a few days.

Eventually someone phoned (just as I had sat down to dinner - typical!) and they finally got it! That was a few weeks ago. 'Spose I'm due for another letter this week. A most astonishing way to waste time and money. And profit.