4/09/23 - 4/10/23 Repayments Dashboard

Repayments

Payment adequacy and seasonal fluctuations

Fraud and money laundering

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Billing

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method of return

Automatic payments for final accounts

Complaints, cancelations and GSOS

Things to remember

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Billing amendments on final accounts

Final accounts and what you should do.

Failure to follow the below steps will result in a rejected repayment

Steps to issue a successful repayment

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• Check the customer has requested the refund and that you have had all relevant conversations with the customer regarding managing their balance
• Talk the customer through the guide - summer is for building credit and winter is for using the credit.
• Explain payment adequacy, the balance on your account is why your direct debit is X amount, if we refund this your monthly payment may increase.
• Reassure the customer that the direct debit system is designed to keep the account in a credit balance or as close to £0 as possible
• Remind the customer that we do check the direct debit amount after every bill produced to actual readings, providing the customer with peace of mind they are always paying the correct amount
• Let the customer know that the monthly direct debit is your usage divided by 12, we understand you will use less in the summer but the payment amount stays the same as we know you will use more in the winter, this variance corrects the any shortfall that could arise.
• Christmas refunds, everyone wants a little extra money around Christmas, remind the customer that we are only at the start of winter and your usage could still increase, meaning your direct debit could increase in the following months.
• Remind the customer that if your account falls into an outstanding balance and the direct debit is cancelled we will ask for payment in full or the dunning process maybe started.
• We want our customers to be in the best position at any given time of the year, our direct debit system is designed to do that! It is very rare that an account credit is not there to be used for winter usage.
• Ensure after every direct debit refund, once the amount has cleared from the account (from 10 working days from the date the refund was processed) and is no longer reflecting in the balance that you carry out a payment adequacy on the account, you must let you customer know that this will be carried out once the amount has cleared.

• Check if the customer has had a refund in the last 30 days or multiple refunds over recent months.
• If they have had multiple refunds in the last 30 days or over recent months, please explore why. If the DD is too high, do a payment adequacy review after the refund has left the account
• If the customer can't explain why they've had multiple refunds over 30 days / more months then please report this as suspicious via the form and do not process a repayment
• Check if the customer been making multiple payments of large amounts which do not align to statement balances, creating a large credit and now requesting a refund, if this is the case do not refund and report via the google form
• Please check If we have never taken a DD payment from the current DD details. If we haven't, this is a red flag. Check that the customer changed the details themselves to understand if there has been any fraudulent activity. If the customer did not change the DDI themselves, please report as suspicious via the form. For both cases where we haven't taken sufficient payments from the DDI the refund will need to be sent via cheque

Google form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1fbn2OYETitrcrxRx_KaONnlIxgxNaZeE6qtT5505qYg/viewform?edit_requested=true

• Check that all consumption billing gaps are resolved to confirm the customers charges are complete
• Check if the customer has been billed up to date (within 14 days and ideally to actual readings) (Note: If there is a communicating smart meter that is polling reads; you can fetch a smart meter read to bill the account up to date without needing to get this from the customer).
• Check meter reads are in line with previous meter reads, if the current reads are a lot lower than previous reads, photos of the meter reads will be required.
• If the actual reads are much lower than the previous estimated reads, Kraken will calculate all the credit at the most recent rates. This is not correct, and the credit will be incorrect. The account needs to have new estimated reads calculated on each of the price change dates. For further information please refer here
• Check the read we are crediting to isn’t lower than the start read/ what read the customer has paid from. If the start read is not visible in Kraken, please pin evidence of the customers start read to the notes on the account.
• If there is minimal to no usage at the property, notes will need to be pinned as to why
• Check that the refund does not include any provisional charges

• For more information click here for refund statuses

The refund should be processed as Direct Debit Refund (Direct Credit) if:

• The customer’s payment method is Direct Debit & we have already taken the value of the refund or more via the latest Direct Debit Instruction (DDI) for this account. If you see that the customer has recently changed their bank details and we have not taken a DD before which is equal to or more than the refund amount, please do not refund this customer. Go to the next step if that is the case. Note: this refund method can still be used if the DDI is no longer live.

The refund should be processed as Cheque if:

• The customer has paid by cash/ card/ we haven’t taken the value of the refund via DD method/ or the customer has just set up a new DDI which we haven’t taken payment from. This is for fraud prevention reasons.

Please ensure the forwarding address and billing name is on the account BACS & Credit/Debit card refund methods are not available at the moment and will be rejected.

If the refund is for complaint compensation/ metering appointment cancellation/ GSOS, please make sure this is applied as a credit in statements before the refund is requested.

The minimum refund amount is £1 If the customer has 2 separate accounts for Gas and Electric you should check whether the other account is in debit and advise the customer that we will transfer the credit to pay towards the debit balance.

For help with any other repayment queries you can find the links below: Repayments - Refunds and rules Repayments - Cheque repayments Payments - refund rejected? Payments - Refund status & method; how to check in Kraken Repayments: Online refund requests Prepayment refunds Bereavement: refund process Payments - Cheque re-issue

For Final Balance refunds – everything will be done by Kraken! For final accounts kraken will automatically raise a refund request once the final bill is closed and issued. For COS accounts the final bill will be issued once the COS reads are received via the flows, please allow time for this. Remember it can take anywhere from 10 working days to 30 calendar days for the D086/URN/MBR to come through.

You do not need to raise or approve refunds for final balance refunds The system will auto raise and auto approve the refund and submit to Finance in line with the required timescales. Any manual intervention can disrupt the script.

If you are amending a final bill and the balance has changed, please make sure the original refund request has been deleted & that you are not including any pending payments in your request Ensure we have updated the customers forwarding address if it is a home move.