That’s just insane, if you think about it, energy prices have roughly doubled from where they were two years ago so £250 might be right unless your old tariff was really cheap.
How many units are you using annually of gas and electricity if you don’t mind me asking?
We moved to Sainsbury's/Eon in Oct 21. Entered our usage over the last year and they worked out what we should be paying - £178/month.
There's 4 of us, but it's a relative new build and has good insulation.
They didn't take the DD first month so our account was instantly £178 in debit. Usage must have inched up because after 12 months, we were about £200 in debit. But they never made any noises about paying that off.
Early spring 23, we're all still on the Govt subsidy scheme, so paying £105/month. Eon tell me we're now about £350 in debit and they're hiking the DD to something daft (so it seemed) like £370 to pay off the deficit. I wrote to them explaining we'd been with them for two winters and one summer, so we were bound to have a bigger debit balance now, but gave the annual usage for the previous 12 months to back up that we'd not increased usage, so asked that they keep the DD at £105 (with subsidy)
When the subsidy stopped, I expected the DD to increase back to £178, but they kept taking just £105. I should have said something but our mortgage had soared and it was a help to keep the electric/gas DD down.
I also got an EV that spring.
And neglected to give them any readings until just before the cheaper fixed (think it was 20.3p for elec and 5.7p gas, with the much lower fixed daily tariff) expired.
So when they reviewed our account in the November (tariff now around 27p/7p) my balance was something like £800 in debit, with an estimated use of £240/month over the year. But they agreed to keep the new, higher DD to £250.
Annoyingly, they've reviewed again and told me I owed just over £1k. That was based on their estimated readings so I've taken some new ones and, although they're lower than their estimates, it's not by a substantial amount.
I'd rather continue to owe them £1k (interest free!) indefinitely, but they obviously see it differently (
) and basically want me to pay it off quickly over 4 months.
So a big chunk of the problem is of my own making, but they're now being twattish about me paying off the deficit.
