I can't speak for others, but there's no way in hell I'm giving any company direct debit abilities to my bank account. Given the fuck-ups we see here daily by banks and businesses, I think anyone who does that is playing with fire. But if it works for you, go for it! I'll spend the 5 minutes every other week to type in the amount needed on my bank's website to send whoever an electronic payment rather than letting them pull money from my account. It's worth the time to me.
In the UK, and I think many other European countries, the direct debit system is very heavily slanted in favour of the customer.
Here[1] is the UK Direct Debit Guarantee. It's extremely easy for the customer to reverse a transaction, and (advising the merchant) "Given the limited scope for appeals [against counterclaims] within the Direct Debit scheme, most disputes happen outside of it".
YOu have to setup the ACH/Direct Debit with each utility here, you can't just set it up at the bank. And the utilities have crappy websites/processes for doing so- if they allow you to do it at all. They have a monopoly, so why bother with improving customer service?
Yeah this amazed me too. Usually gas and electric companies make a yearly estimate based on last year's use, then divide that by 12 months. If the estimate overshot, you get money back, otherwise you have to pay a little extra at the end of a 12 month cycle.
That is an option for most of my utilities, but I haven't set it up. I moved a year ago so it would have been difficult to estimate usage at that point. I guess I could set it up now.
