ESB and Gas Bills

Does anyone know can these bills be gotten every month or does it have to be bi-monthly??

There's nothing to stop you paying into your utility account before you receive a bill. You could, for example, pay €10 a week into each account. No need to wait for a bill.

I think the ESB allows you to do a monthly direct debit - they call it an equaliser or something like that? They average out your bills over the year and debit it monthly. However there could be some discrepancy by the end of the year depending if there was an underpayment or overpayment.

You don't need EBS's Equaliser to do that - you can just divide your annual average/projected bill by 12 and make monthly lodgements to your ESB account yourself without tieing yourself into their system. Obviously you'd need to keep an eye out for major discrepancies between your average/projected costs and actual costs. Personally I would prefer to keep control over cashflow and payments myself rather than abrogating this control to the service provider. Mistakes can and do happen and if they do then it could be hard to get a refund or compensation.

an post doesnt appear to mind how often you make a payment, just so long as you bring a bill with a bar code on the bottom. just say the amount you want to pay. on the same subject, sort of, all my 4 previous bills have been estimated, first two were undershoots but with relatively good summer etc the next 2 were progressively getting out of kilter. so much so that reading the meter just now its only 2 units over the last bill ( august). i have now received another estimate and seperately a letter asking me to read the meter and phone them the units. but I think I will let it sit and have my freebie in December when it suits better. the real reason they are out of kilter is because I have installed more insulation and changed the home heating system to a pressurised one. definitely more efficient. the current estimate would probably be around about correct if the last two weren't so far over but I still find it odd that they are estimating 1100 odd units for this time of year and during the summer they estimated over 1200 on both the june and august bills. I am tempted to let them estimate the December one and run with the freebie in february when the 20% increase kicks in, but I dont suppose I will get away with that. they also mention in the letter how the 'reader' left a card for me to fill in, but I never received any.

Doesn't need An Post either. For example I have ESB set up as a bill payment on my PTSB online banking and could pay money into the EBS account as and when I decided and not just when I received a bill. But I prefer not to give ESB an interest free loan and just pay the bill when it's due.

If you ever miss the meter reading or get an estimated bill then you can simply phone in the actual meter reading yourself or even do it online:

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