Consider yourself lucky that you can cancel your direct debits from your bank. For me to cancel them in Holland, I have to send a request to the company in question and tell them to cancel it, which they will do in their own sweet time and then give you a refund at a time that is convenient for them. The only way to do it at the bank in Holland is to close the account and open a new one.
![Angry [:@]](/emoticons/emotion-12.gif)
I don't use many DDs in Holland - it's easier to pay on-line, although now they are charging an extra €1.50 for each "paper" copy of the bill that they send you if you don't pay by DD
.
Most of these DDs, though, operate on the premise that the payments for the whole year are spread equally over the whole year, and not on a pay as you go model. In the winter, you tend to use much more gas/month than the summer (heating), and so your monthly usage in the winter should be much higher. As we're coming out of the summer months, I'd expect almost everyone to have considerable credit on their account to balance out the additional winter usage. That said, I'm still cynical enough to believe that the various energy companies are either fleecing the public or just phenominally incompentent... or both.
If I remember, when the price of petrol was shooting up, so was the price of gas. Now that the price of petrol is coming down, surely we can also expect the price of gas to come down as well?! No...I thought that would be expecting too much. CEO needs a new Ferrari, doesn't he!
Yours Disgruntled,
H.
My Gallery.
flickr gallery