Payment Reviews: Why Your Payments Have Changed
Paying by a monthly reoccurring method, like Stripe, is the easiest way to budget and pay for your utility bills throughout the year. At Community Utilities, our aim is to spread your payments out evenly to keep your account balance as close to zero as possible. We aim to conduct payment reviews every three months or so to help make sure you aren’t paying too much or too little for your utilities. Below, we’ll explain what a payment review is and how it works. You’ll also find information about the most common reasons we may change your monthly payment amount.
What is a payment review?
During your payment review we look at what you’ve used in the past and your latest meter readings to forecast how much energy (this can be electricity and/or heat and water) you’ll use going forward, as well as seasonality changes (typically you will use more energy in the winter months when it’s colder compared to the summer months when it’s warmer). We then divide this cost and spread it out into a number of regular payment amounts. If you have additional services like, council tax, we include the standardised amount for you. The aim of a payment review is to ensure that your account balance doesn’t go into debit or builds up too much credit.
My monthly payments have changed. Why?
Your payments may have changed following our review of your usage versus how much you’re currently paying, and it’s important we ensure you pay the right amount each month for what you use.
There are many reasons why we may change your payments:
You’ve built up a large credit or debit on your account and we need to adjust your payments accordingly.
Your meter readings show us that your forecasted energy usage is higher or lower than what we previously thought it would be.
There’s been a change in your circumstances. This could be that you have recently moved or that the electric appliances you use in your home have changed.
Your tariff has changed. Your energy usage is the same, but we’ve had to adjust your payments to cover a price increase or decrease.
We believe we have a good idea of your actual energy usage. If we don’t have a full history of your energy usage, we’ll have forecasted what you use based on the size of your home and how many people live there. Once we’ve had regular meter readings from you, we may adjust your forecasts in line with what you’re actually using.
You can read more about our Payment Review process by clicking the button below.