Which energy suppliers let you pay your bill with an American Express card?

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• Chris says:

  19 Mar19 March 13:22

  I cant get this benefit from my energy supplier, but what I do do, as sometimes I struggle to reach the £10k on the Barclaycard premium Avios is to prepay my entire years council tax and Virgin media broadband all upfront. Those both help.

  • Ryan says:

    19 Mar19 March 13:31

    You need to find a supplier (and council?!) who are lax with how they deal with overpayments

  • roams84 says:

    20 Mar20 March 11:31

    How do you pay your Council Tax, with Paypoint?

    • Rob says:

      20 Mar20 March 11:38

      Given them the bill, say ‘pay this’ and hand over a credit card.

      Most Paypoint stores will tell you to jump off a cliff at this point but some, especially Co-Op stores, will process it with a credit card.

      As per other comments though, a huge number of places seem to have been delisted as Paypoint outlets recently.

    • QFFlyer says:

      20 Mar20 March 11:49

      When I lived in the UK, I paid mine via CC on their website.

      • roams84 says:

        20 Mar20 March 12:30

        Unbelievable, I was going to waste time at the Paypoint but they allow it via Paypal on my local Council website! Thanks

• Greg says:

  19 Mar19 March 15:03

  I just paid my Quarterly EDF bill with my AMEX. Don’t ask why I only get billed quarterly, our previous tenants set it up somehow, and I just inherited it, Suits me perfectly.

• Freddy says:

  19 Mar19 March 15:31

  The potential return even on sky high energy bills is surely quite limited compared to the monthly admin of processing a manual payment with one of a few energy providers

  • Peter K says:

    19 Mar19 March 19:34

    That depends on whether it helps you hit sign-up bonuses. Also, most here are on about pre-paying a large sum once, to maybe twice, yearly to pay for the whole year, not a monthly payment.

• paul says:

  19 Mar19 March 18:33

  Paid £2.000 Amex to credit my Octopus account in October.

  Then they (without asking me or telling me) gave a “payment holiday” and stopped taking my monthly DD payments.

  So, shall wait for the balance to drop below 1k and top up again.

  Been doing this for many years as I use it as a way to save up some cash. The Amex use makes it even better.

  • Thegasman says:

    20 Mar20 March 06:31

    Problem is in the current interest rate environment there is a clear opportunity cost doing this. That £2k could be sat in an almost instant access account earning 3+% rather than floating Octopus an interest free loan for 0.8-1.5% return in points (depending on scheme/card).

    Obviously SUB/voucher earning could make a big difference.

• Phil says:

  20 Mar20 March 00:47

  Here in Northern Ireland SSE Airtricity Gas will issue you with an “Energy Saver Card” even for bill pay customers. This can have money applied to the account via Paypoint – either before bill due or in the window before payment is due. Some retailers accept Amex for Paypoint – eg Co-op. Works well for me!

• Lanre says:

  20 Mar20 March 07:22

  I use EDF and have been doing this for a while. The real trick is to set up a nominal direct debit payment so you can get the direct debit rate and then pay the rest monthly using Amex. My monthly recommended DD amount is £335. I have DD set up for £10 and then I pay £325 using the one off payment method. I INSTANTLY clear the payment to Amex though!!!!

• Charlieface says:

  20 Mar20 March 10:11

  I can’t believe noone has mentioned using Paypoint. Many Paypoint shops allow you to pay using a card, which could be an Amex, and most suppliers allow Paypoint as a payment method.

  • Rob says:

    20 Mar20 March 10:14

    Was mentioned earlier – appears to be dead. Most Paypoint outlets now show as ‘closed’.

    • Charlieface says:

      21 Mar21 March 01:00

      Not sure what you mean. My local takes Amex and does Paypoint, there is another that does Payzone. And all Co-ops do Paypoint also.

• WaynedP says:

  20 Mar20 March 12:12

  The clue is in the title of Ofgem’s credit balance mutualisation guarantee … when energy suppliers fail, their losses are mutualised which is just another way of saying “we all pay a cost” – even the rest of us who did due diligence and steered clear of the multitude of suppliers with evidently flawed business models (like not provisioning for their customer balances or their renewables obligations and not hedging their fixed price offers with forward purchases).

  Ofgem’s credit balance mutualisation guarantee was designed to protect modest seasonal fluctuations built up from a constant year-round direct debit. It was not designed to offer risk-free opportunities for sign-up bonus seeking loyalty points hobbyists to make whole year overpayments without having to weigh up the financial prudence of their cupidity.

  In the nine months to mid 2022 Ofgem (which has no incentive to exaggerate these things) admitted that the cost to UK consumers of domestic energy supplier failures had cost £94 per household. That’s an historic cost that all of us have already borne and @JDB is accurate.

  https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/ofgem-announces-tough-new-financial-measures-ensure-energy-suppliers-can-withstand-future-shocks-including-protection-customers-credit-balances

  Rather than fun and games, I can’t help feeling that the thought of destitute folk struggling to pay day-to-day energy costs to warm one room or cook a single meal, yet shouldering part of the cost of someone’s discounted luxury points holiday earned from care-free overpayments to a failed energy supplier should be deeply troubling to one and all.

  • Charlieface says:

    21 Mar21 March 01:05

    The vast, vast majority of those overpayments are due to direct debits.
    And a large chunk of it is offset by underpayments (customer debt).

    The primary issue was Ofgem allowing companies to buy short contracts and sell long, which meant they were not hedged properly. This was mostly avoidable, and Ofgem are trying to shove the blame on customers by forcing companies to pay the hedging difference when they switch.

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