[Mailman]

Originally Posted by Lee_EONNext

@meldrewreborn I understand, I really do however again the EAC is purely an estimate.

In terms of your monthly DD we look at actual usage not so much the EAC. So if you were speaking to me in customer service, I would be looking at physical history. If the EAC used at quotation was wrong, then I would ask for something like you have posted to show me what your actual usage, I would have no reason not to believe a customer if they say they have they AAC (Actual Annual Consumption) which in this case you do.

Me as a customer, mine is way out from another supplier, I just found human intervention sorted it, however I do understand why you want this to be as accurate as possible.

If anything does change on this, you will be the first to know.

The issue that probably exists is that folks like @meldrewreborn ring up CS and complain that the DD amount is too high. Some/perhaps many may have the kind of detailed annualised kWh usage that should trump the EAU numbers churned out by industry. So the customer goes away feeling as though they have got satisfaction and a more reasonable DD amount. Trouble comes at the next DD assessment- perhaps 6 months or is it longer or shorter? Industry will continue to churn out incorrect usage numbers till the cows come home 🐄 . TBH I'd prefer to be on a fixed DD amount based on sensible usage numbers but as long as these inflated industry EAU numbers keep coming I'll be sticking on VDD. 🙄

[meldrewreborn]

@Mailman

unfortunately it’s a regular negotiation, but if the 10% online reduction option works that make life simpler.

the adjustment should only be necessary if prices had changed (I’m on a recent fix - so that’s out) or the estimate of my consumption is higher. Oh dear!

[meldrewreborn]

I’ve been looking at The OFGEM rules in relation to the setting of Direct Debits, and it seems that fair and reasonable isn’t the test, instead they should be as accurate as possible given the information available. That being the case, reliance upon the EAC, especially when it is not the suppliers own data, should be secondary to actual customer data held by the supplier if of a sufficiently long period. Any comment @Lee_EONNext?

[WizzyWigg]

If you go to your online account and into Manage Payments. Under Change Payments this is the explanation from Eon Next on how Direct Debits are calculated. 😶

How we calculate your Direct Debit
To work out your monthly payments, we estimate how much energy we think you'll use by looking at the last year of usage data and how much that'll cost on the tariff you're currently on.
We also factor in your current balance and what we think a healthy balance would be given the time of year. Finally, we split the total costs into 12 equal monthly payments.
This means you'd usually use more in the colder months and less in the warmer months and we've already accounted for that in our calculations which means it's perfectly normal to build up a credit in the summer too.
You might end up using more or less energy than we predict so over the course of the year, we get a more accurate idea of your energy usage by keeping track of the meter readings we receive and regularly review your payments based on these.
The aim is to ensure your payments cover your usage and account balance making sure your account doesn't go into debt.

[geoffers]

Originally Posted by geoffers

Not sure if it'll make any difference, but because it takes three or four days from my DD being taken from the bank to it appearing on my EOn account, I shifted my payment day back by five days so that the payment appears on the Eon account before they make their monthly deductions, with the current credit/debit balance showing on that month's statement

Thinking behind this is that the monthly statement is more likely to stay in credit than show it's (briefly) fallen into debit. So if they base their estimated consumption on the number of months that you're in debit, hopefully this will help minimise the DD amount that they set.

Just to show how moving my DD collection date back 5 days keeps my account showing in credit for much longer

If it had been taken on the account-due date it wouldn't have shown in the account until after the account cr/db was calculated, so the account would have shown as being in debit on the due date many more times

Whether this helps in calculating your DD I don't know, but it looks better to me 🤓