Incentive to Pay by Direct Debit

What - if anything - would incentivise you to sign up for payment of an annual bill by direct debit?

A price discount.

In the UK discounts by paying by DD are common (or were when I last lived there) - e.g. I got £10 off my gas bill, £5 off my electricity bill etc. There were also discounts for signing up to payment plans (where you pay a fixed amount each month and settle up once a year - you basically agree not to have your meter read more than once a year and in return you get a discount).

Here in Ireland, you seem to be charged more if you want to split payments over the year!

When authorising a direct debit I'd also like to be able to specify:

Frequency that it may be used.
Limit on amount withdrawn.
End-date.

That would make me less highly reluctant to use them.

yoganmahew said:

In the UK discounts by paying by DD are common (or were when I last lived there) - e.g. I got £10 off my gas bill, £5 off my electricity bill etc. There were also discounts for signing up to payment plans (where you pay a fixed amount each month and settle up once a year - you basically agree not to have your meter read more than once a year and in return you get a discount).

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I guess you're reducing supplier's administration cost by agreeing to pay agreed amount every month. They need to send somebody out to do a meter reading only once a month and your bills don't need to be individually entered. Makes sense...

GeneralZod said:

When authorising a direct debit I'd also like to be able to specify:

Frequency that it may be used.
Limit on amount withdrawn.
End-date.

That would make me less highly reluctant to use them.

Click to expand...

Totally agree! I hate the fact that Bord Gais issue bills at their leisur eand are likely to DD my current account just a few days before my slary is paid in. This left me in overdraft (by not much though) often enough.

Nothing would encourage me to use them.

I've had a slight run-in with an insurance company who continued to take DD's out of my account after I cancelled my insurance with them. Now I make sure that only my mortgage is a DD, all else is paid for by bank transfer, Laser or Visa.