I’m with London Power, which in the background is Octopus.
My costs are about double what they were last year, based on estimated annual cost. Although this time last year I was on a fixed tariff which was setup in 2020, so that contributes to the increase. I submit meter readings once a month.
Are you on smart meters?
As things stand, I can see no benefit whatsoever in me moving away from British Gas. Unless of course I can get a referral for Octopus Energy and they bill monthly on demand. I don’t want to get involved in paying fixed direct debits of any kind.
Not on smart meter. They are available, I just haven’t got round to requesting installation.
I pay fixed direct debit. I prefer it to variable and would continue with fixed even after getting a smart meter.
I guess one of the benefits of buying a new build, was that smart meters were installed from the off.
Clearly many of those I have spoken to, are choosing to pay large fixed monthly direct debits in order to cover the bigger winter payments. I just prefer to pay for what I’m using month to month.
Helpful to most others though, who are paid their salary monthly, and thus budget monthly. Easier to budget a flat £200 per month than pay £50 per month throughout summer, £90 per month through autumn and spring, and then £500 per month throughout winter.
You could surely budget things the ad-hoc way, but you’d need to build that cash up beforehand and start the second your winter usage costs start coming down. It’s just not a viable option for most people.
Fixed monthly payments for me. Have Bulb tried taking the P? Yes. Have I let them? No. Tripling sounds a bit much to me, but I can see how someone might now be paying double compared to a year ago (Ours will be more than double 2021’s bills come October, potentially hitting triple come January), assuming they’re not in debit to the supplier.
How can you get it set up to pay exactly what you’ve used like a credit card paid in full?
I’ve never been offered this by x4 different energy suppliers?
I’ve never had a DD be less than my usage so always have a credit paid back eventually
One would hope I’d be running a hot tub 24/7 to be paying 500 quid a month 
I realise there are plenty who are struggling with their energy bills. My Wife and I are used to paying as the bills come in, we’re lucky enough I guess to have extra to be able to budget that way.
I genuinely don’t know. British Gas just charge me monthly for what we use on the smart meters. They haven’t even offered me another payment method and I haven’t asked. I thought it was just a normal way of being billed.
Usually, you have to ask! I don’t know if they have to let you though. Typically this way is done quarterly as opposed to monthly, though I’m sure they can offer it monthly too. At least that’s how it worked when I was with British Gas and didn’t want direct debit. But I was living alone at that time, so it didn’t matter much.
It’s not what they tend to offer though. I don’t think they like it, thats why there’s usually a discount for direct debit.
I think in @Topsy2’s case, it’s what you go onto when you move into a new property which they supply, because they have no bank details for you.
Pretty much mostly goes on heating. It’s all electric here, no gas, and it’s the electricity prices which bears the brunt of price rises. This is with a heat pump too, and it makes a vast difference. Prior to all the increases, with optimal conditions (keeping it on 24/7 with automations, even in summer) it’s very efficient and only about 20% more than gas. No longer the case now though, so it’s become quite an expensive thing. Gas isn’t an option here though.
When we were in the BG new homeowner tariff, we were billed monthly variable direct debit. When that tariff finished, we were just moved onto the capped tariff, still billed monthly, variable direct debit.
Ah okay, so yours isn’t the case where they send you a bill, and then you go online to pay it manually, which is the thing I’m thinking of!
Possibly also different suppliers have different policies on fixed direct debits. Some might be entirely dictated by the energy company. Octopus allows the customer to control the amount - perhaps within a limit of what’s reasonable.
No, not quite. Because we’re on smart meters, the meter readings are obviously automatically sent, updated every 10 seconds or something daft. When it reaches billing date, BG just send out an email telling me that our bill is ready to view in our online account. It’s paid automatically via direct debit to the exact amount we’re billed for. I thought this was the whole point about smart meters, that households would be billed exactly like this unless the bill payer was tied up to a particular fixed rated tariff or similiar, then perhaps they might be billed slightly differently?
I suspect that is the case. For me, I don’t want to be shoving hundreds of pounds into my energy providers accounts for future bills. As has been said, it works for many, but I’d rather have money that belongs to me sat in my account, rather than in my energy providers account. Might be fuzzy logic to some, but that’s the way I like it.
Totally agree but I’ve genuinely never seen it as an option. Perhaps I should enquire with BG.
Yep. Nothing fuzzy about that. 
It can work the other way too. If the fixed direct debit has been setup correctly (i.e. represents the approx annual cost divided by 12) there will be several months of the year during which you owe the energy company money and it’s effectively lending you money for free.
However I suspect most customers probably do let the energy company setup the direct debit in a way that customer is always in credit.
That’s not really how the cap works, OFGEM have not set standing charge and unit rates that every supplier must charge.
They have set the yearly cost that energy should cost an ‘average’ household which is using 2900kWh of electricity and 12000kWh of gas. How the suppliers arrive at that cost is up to them. So there are SVR tariffs that are better for low users, and some better for high users. Obviously there’s a limited window that suppliers can use for their SC and unit costs to make the magic figure for the ‘average’ household, though.
If you are a low energy user then yes your energy costs are unlikely to cause hardship.
If the unit costs you’re paying now aren’t significantly more than the fixed tariff that has just ended, though, then it seems you were on a poor tariff earlier. I have just come off a 12 month fix with EDF and SC and unit rates for both gas and electricity have increased substantially.
At the moment, you are right. At the start of last week there probably would have been a fixed tariff with GEUK that would have been cheaper than the new capped SVR rates starting in October, but that tariff has been removed now.
To the contrary. That is exactly how the price cap works.
OFGEM set the caps for standing charges, and for units of energy.
See here
The suppliers then make their own rates within that cap.
No, they don’t
I suggest you contact ofgem then and tell them to correct their website 
