If you’re worried about paying your energy bills and struggling to make ends meet, we’re here to help. We can discuss a variety of different options to pay and offer additional support – the most important thing is that you contact us as soon as you can. The earlier we hear from you, the sooner we can help.

If you're a domestic customer:

If you don’t pay or get in touch with us, we will contact you about the balance outstanding. This could be by email, letter, text messages and phone calls. Depending on the contact information we hold for you. 

If you would like some advice on how to reduce your bills or how you can be more energy efficient, our website has some useful energy saving tips www.ecotricity.co.uk/your-green-energy/energy-saving-advice.

There are still things we can do to help – please contact us and we'll go through the options available.

Please continue to pay your monthly energy usage and contact us so that we can discuss options for your debt.

If we no longer supply energy to you but you owe money on your final bill, we can set up an interest-free payment plan for you to pay the debt off in manageable instalments. We’ll just need to ask you a few questions to understand your situation and work out something that’s affordable for you.

We’ll always attempt a second collection, usually between 5 to 10 working days later. If the Direct Debit fails a second time, your Direct Debit will be automatically cancelled, and no further payments will be taken. It’s important for you to contact us if you know you’re struggling and can’t pay your bill or arrangement. We can then discuss what to do and support you further.

Please read our Privacy Policy.

If you’re unable to top up due to financial difficulties, please call us on 01453 761350 or 0800 917 9525. We’ll need to ask you a few questions to understand your situation and work out your options.

There is an emergency credit of £10 that allows you to keep your power on even when your balance has run out.

If your meter runs out of credit, your electricity and gas will switch off. For this reason, we recommend you always keep a £10 float on your meter. For those rare times when it does happen, an emergency credit facility allows you to borrow £10 to see you through until you can get to a top up outlet to purchase more credit.

If you’ve got a Smart Meter you’ll have access to something called Friendly Credit during times we’re not open, or are closing soon – for more information, visit Help with Pay As You Go.

Please remember to keep topping up your meter during the summer months to avoid standing charge build up. Otherwise, if you only start topping up in the winter months, you’ll need to repay the amount that’s built up and this will impact the amount of energy you have available when you really need it.

If you are struggling to heat your home or afford other essential items over the colder months, contact your local council to see what support may be available.  

MoneyHelper provides access to free, confidential and independent advice straight away for customers who live in England and are not already in a debt solution.

Your local CAB can give you advice about ways to manage your debts and other legal matters:

StepChange is the UK’s largest debt charity, offering free, independent advice. Give them a call free on 0800 138 1111 or visit stepchange.org

The National Debtline charity also offers free, independent advice. Give them a call on 0808 808 4000 or visit nationaldebtline.org

Call 01733 421021 or visit charisgrants.com to check that you’re getting everything you’re entitled to. They may be able to offer grants to help clear some of your debts too.

Turn2us is a national charity that helps people in financial hardship gain access to welfare benefits, charitable grants and support services. Visit their website at turn2us.org.uk.

Entitled to are an independent company who simplify the benefits system so people can quickly find out what financial support they may be entitled to. Their mission is to make sure everyone who is entitled to benefits is empowered to claim them. 

Scope offer free energy advice to disabled people, helping them to manage their energy needs, as well as practical advice and emotional support through their helpline, online community and advice and support pages.

If you’ve made a payment on our automated phone line, the app, or the online account, then the credit can take up to 30 minutes to be added to your meter – although usually it happens straight away. 

If you’ve topped up your electricity key or gas card, put it in your meter, but the credit hasn’t appeared there are a few reasons why this could be. If you’ve tried all of these things but your top up still isn’t being added to your meter, there’s no power or an error message is appearing, please get in touch with us. We may need to send out an engineer so please make sure you’re going to be in for the next few hours. 

We should be billing you to readings that we automatically receive from your meter. On your bill, it will state 'Read' next to the meter readings. If your bill states 'Estimate', please get in touch and we will investigate.

If for reasons of health you are unable to read your meter, we can arrange to help you. Please call us on 0345 555 7 100 for further information.

In England and Wales, we can provide the Warm Home Discount for the following two groups of people:

Core Group 1: Customers who receive the Guarantee Credit element of Pension Credit.

Core Group 1: Customers who receive the Guarantee Credit element of Pension Credit. The DWP will tell us if you’re eligible and we’ll apply the payment automatically to your bill by March 2025.

If you’re finding it difficult to pay your energy bills, the best thing to do is to get in touch with us as early as you can on 01453 761 350 and 0800 917 9525. We’ll do everything we can to make paying your bill as easy as possible for you.