Direct Debit

A Direct Debit is the simplest and most convenient way for you to pay your energy bills. It is an instruction made by you to your bank or building society that authorises us to take an agreed amount and on an agreed date automatically.

The Direct Debit Guarantee ensures that we cannot take a different amount from your account or on a different date without sufficient notice being provided to you.

A Direct Debit is a way of s-p-r-e-a-d-i-n-g out the cost of your energy by splitting up your yearly energy payment into regular payments.

For example, if you were to use £1200 in energy over a year, we could divide this payment into a fixed payment of £100 a month for 12 months. This way your energy use is covered all year, with no change to the amount you’d pay.

It couldn’t be easier.  As part of the sign-up process on our website or on the phone, we will ask you for the following information to set up a Direct Debit Instruction with your bank:

• Your name and address
• Name and address of your bank or building society
• Your bank or building society account number
• The branch sort code of your bank or building society
• The name(s) on the account

Your first monthly Direct Debit is based on the information you give us when you sign up: this will be based on the monthly payment value or annual energy consumption provided by you, or the estimated annual consumption based on the size of property, how many bedrooms etc. After you’ve been on supply for a month or two and have provided a few meter readings, you can choose your monthly Direct Debit payment amounts based on your energy usage.

If you have accidentally changed your payment amount, please call us and we can help you change it back to the amount you previously set.

We will review your account on an ongoing basis. We’ll check to make sure that the energy you’ve been using is covered by your Direct Debit payments. Sometimes we find that we may have underestimated or overestimated the amount of energy you’re actually using each year. If this happens we’ll try to amend your monthly payment so that your ongoing energy use is covered.

Help us to help you: just give us meter readings every month to help make your Direct Debit reassessments more accurate.

We aim to review your account on an ongoing basis to make sure everything’s running smoothly. If you’ve provided monthly meter readings, we’ll use these to reassess your Direct Debit payment.

This Guarantee is offered by all banks and building societies that accept instructions to pay Direct Debits.

If there are any changes to the amount, date or frequency of your Direct Debit, E.ON Next Energy Limited will notify you 5 working days in advance of your account being debited or as otherwise agreed. If you request E.ON Next Energy Limited to collect a payment, confirmation of the amount and date will be given to you at the time of the request.

If an error is made in the payment of your Direct Debit, by E.ON Next Energy Limited or your bank or building society, you are entitled to a full and immediate refund of the amount paid from your bank or building society. If you receive a refund that you are not entitled to, you must pay it back when E.ON Next Energy Limited asks you to.

You can cancel a Direct Debit at any time by simply contacting your bank or building society. Written confirmation may be required. Please also notify us.

If you feel that you’re paying too much or too little and aren’t sure if this is right or just want some extra guidance, get in touch and we can look at changing this for you.

We’d just ask you to remember that your Direct Debit amount is based on 12 months of usage divided into equal payments. So it’s totally normal throughout the year for you to build up credit or debit on your account.

To help you budget, we’ll aim to keep your payments at a similar level throughout the year. This may mean that you’re in credit during the summer months when you use less energy, which then offsets higher usage during the winter.

We recommend you keep any credit you’ve built up over the summer months. However if you have a lot of credit and want some back, you can email us at hi@sainsburysenergy.com to request a refund.

The amount of energy you use will vary throughout the year. It’s normal for customers to have debt at the end of the winter, or have credit at the end of summer. We use this credit built up over the summer months to offset increased usage in winter.

If you see your account rising and are concerned with the amount of debt, this can easily be sorted without having to get in touch.

We keep track of your payments and energy usage to ensure you’re not paying too much or too little and we aim to have your account balance at zero after 12 months. To give yourself peace of mind that you’re paying the right amount, it’s really important to provide meter readings every month.

If you think something’s not quite right with your bill, or if you have a lot of credit and want some back, you can email us at hi@sainsburysenergy.com to request a refund.

If you pay for your energy via Direct Debit, you’ll automatically get a reduction on your monthly payment. If your Direct Debit is lower than the government payment it will be added as credit to your energy account. This will happen once a month over the six-month payment period.

You don’t need to apply for the £400 energy discount. It is being paid out by us (electricity suppliers) to consumers over six months. The first payments started in October 2022.

In October and November, households got a discount of £66 per month on their energy bills. This changed to £67 each month in December and will continue through to March 2023.

Every household will get the discount each month, regardless of how you pay for your energy (i.e. by Direct Debit or pre-payment meter).