Consequences of paying bills late?

Cherrycola

What, if any, are the effects on your credit rating, or ability to switch providers and get deposits back, if you pay your bills after the due date?

Im just curious because im having a huge issue with Flogas at the moment.

We keep receiving our gas bill either ON the due date, or after it, so making it virtually impossible to pay the bill ontime, considering online payment takes at least 3 days, and their bill states that it may take 5 days for payment to reach your account.
We dont pay by DD simply because we need to have control over what money leaves our account and when, and we have paid €390 deposit for this privilege!

The time frame from invoice date to due date appears to be 7days, which to me is extremely short anyway, but when you dont receive the bill until AFTER the due date its irrelevant!

There is no option that im aware of to receive the bill via email, or view it online, so we have to wait for the paper one.

Also, please note, this is not as a result of the current weather conditions, this has happened consistently over the last few months, but with such huge bills coming in now for the winter, its really getting on my nerves!! :mad: Its hard to organise your finances with such short notice.

And i wasnt aware that it could have any effect on our credit rating until someone mentioned it to me that one of the tv/broadband providers had a similar scam running a few years ago, as a way to keep customers from leaving them, is this true??:eek: Using late payment as the reason they couldnt leave??

Any thoughts anyone??
Ive emailed Flogas, but have heard nothing back

Next stop CER i guess?

keithclancy

Cherrycola wrote: »

What, if any, are the effects on your credit rating, or ability to switch providers and get deposits back, if you pay your bills after the due date?

Im just curious because im having a huge issue with Flogas at the moment.

We keep receiving our gas bill either ON the due date, or after it, so making it virtually impossible to pay the bill ontime, considering online payment takes at least 3 days, and their bill states that it may take 5 days for payment to reach your account.
We dont pay by DD simply because we need to have control over what money leaves our account and when, and we have paid €390 deposit for this privilege!

The time frame from invoice date to due date appears to be 7days, which to me is extremely short anyway, but when you dont receive the bill until AFTER the due date its irrelevant!

There is no option that im aware of to receive the bill via email, or view it online, so we have to wait for the paper one.

Also, please note, this is not as a result of the current weather conditions, this has happened consistently over the last few months, but with such huge bills coming in now for the winter, its really getting on my nerves!! :mad: Its hard to organise your finances with such short notice.

And i wasnt aware that it could have any effect on our credit rating until someone mentioned it to me that one of the tv/broadband providers had a similar scam running a few years ago, as a way to keep customers from leaving them, is this true??:eek: Using late payment as the reason they couldnt leave??

Any thoughts anyone??
Ive emailed Flogas, but have heard nothing back

Next stop CER i guess?

https://www.billpay.ie/billpay.html

Problem solved ?

jor el

Bills don't effect your credit rating, and the only impact on switching provider would be if you wanted to use this particular company again, and they may have you black listed for late payments. They shouldn't be able to hold your deposit unless your account is in arrears.

TV/boradband providers cannot effect your credit rating either, though they may threaten to if you don't pay your bills, but it's all lies.

JamesBond2010

yes i would make an offical complaint to them. or else go higher up if you dont get a response.

Cherrycola

@ Keithclancy

I use billpay to pay my bills, but if you read through my post correctly, you will see that i have no idea of the bill amount until i recieve the paper bill, so therefore cannot pay the bill before the due date!

I also dont think Flogas have an option for me to credit my account by auto-paying a certain amount into it each month like i do with my ESB(yes, i know how to use Billpay to its full advantage!):rolleyes: Which is irrelevant anyway, because if i dont credit the account with the correct amount, im still not fully paid up by the due date, and how can i credit it with the bill amount, if i dont know what that is!!!!!

Flogas do have a budget option, and a payment card option, both of which are based on an average amount that they calculate for you, but they use your last 12 mths bill history to do this, and as im not with FLogas 12 mths yet, neither of these options are open to me yet.

So back to the original point, which is Flogas sending out bills too late for me to pay my bill ontime.

Cherrycola

JamesBond2010 wrote: »

yes i would make an offical complaint to them. or else go higher up if you dont get a response.

I have done this, just waiting to hear back. If i dont get a response i'll contact the CER

If the only offer a paper bill option, then they need to issue them ontime!

foggy_lad

Bord Gais have similar issues in delivering my bills before the direct debit hits the bank so I made an official complaint but they have so far failed to properly respond to this. They are continuing to blame An Post but all my other bills and post arrives on time.

The CER are useless as you must complete all the escalation with bord Gais before they will get involved, but bord Gais won't escalate the issue even though their own systems or the company they outsource their bill production to are clearly at fault in the delays.

keithclancy

Cherrycola wrote: »

@ Keithclancy

I use billpay to pay my bills, but if you read through my post correctly, you will see that i have no idea of the bill amount until i recieve the paper bill, so therefore cannot pay the bill before the due date!

I also dont think Flogas have an option for me to credit my account by auto-paying a certain amount into it each month like i do with my ESB(yes, i know how to use Billpay to its full advantage!):rolleyes: Which is irrelevant anyway, because if i dont credit the account with the correct amount, im still not fully paid up by the due date, and how can i credit it with the bill amount, if i dont know what that is!!!!!

Flogas do have a budget option, and a payment card option, both of which are based on an average amount that they calculate for you, but they use your last 12 mths bill history to do this, and as im not with FLogas 12 mths yet, neither of these options are open to me yet.

So back to the original point, which is Flogas sending out bills too late for me to pay my bill ontime.

Dont you get a digital invoice with billpay though ?
Used it years back and remember I had something like that for Vodafone on it.

Cherrycola

Billpay is just a facility to process your bill payment, they dont receive copies of your bill at all. Its up to you to input the amount you want to pay off your bill.

Really they are just a platform for setting up recurring payments, in fact its quicker to pay your bills directly from your online banking, as all your Billpay payments come from your account/laser card anyway, they're just a middle man between you, your bank and our service provider.