Weekly or fortnightly billing

Weekly or fortnightly billing is available to residential and business customers with single electricity supply only. You'll need to be set up for direct debit payment and email correspondence. You'll also need a communicating smart meter - most properties have this type of meter installed already. We'll check this all for you when you sign up.

Weekly or fortnightly billing is not available:

• In conjunction with SmoothPay, ControlPay or any prepayment product;
• On unmetered contracts or contracts that are jointly or collectively invoiced;
• On Time of Use contracts;
• To customers who also receive gas or broadband from us at the same property; or
• To existing customers with an unsatisfactory payment record with us.

If you’re already with Contact and meet the eligibility criteria, simply send us a message and we’ll move you over.

For new customers, as long as you’re eligible, just choose the option when you sign up to one of our electricity plans.

No, we are unable to remotely read gas meters and only send a meter reader out to read your meter every other month, so if you have gas and electricity at your property, you will need to receive monthly bills.

Sure can, all of our current electricity plans are available on weekly or fortnightly billing, including fixed term plans.

Because weekly or fortnightly billing is only available on electricity supply, broadband discounts are not available.

We generate weekly and fortnightly bills on Monday each week, these will be emailed to you and available to view first thing Tuesday at the latest.

We will take your meter readings on or around midnight Saturday each week or fortnight, so your bills will cover usage for the previous week or fortnight ending on or around midnight Saturday.

To be eligible for weekly or fortnightly billing, you must set up to pay your bills by direct debit from either a bank account or a card (0.86% incl GST Card Processing Fee applies for payments from a card). 

This is easy to set up by calling us on 0800 80 9000 or signing into My Account and providing us with your bank account or card details. 

When a weekly or fortnightly bill is generated, it will have a 3 day due date. Your bill will clearly show the payment amount, due date and the day it will be debited from your account. 

As we generate weekly and fortnightly bills on Mondays each week, the payment due date will be generally be on Thursday. 

Your first bill may be for a longer or shorter period, depending on when you sign up for weekly or fortnightly billing. This could be due to delays caused by switching your property from another retailer or if you are an existing customer changing from monthly billing and have unbilled usage since your last monthly bill.

When going onto weekly or fortnightly billing it's just the first bill that's affected, things will be back to normal the following week or fortnight and you will be billed regularly for 7 or 14 days going forward.

Any monthly bills created before you change to weekly or fortnightly billing will keep their 14 day due date.  This may mean your first weekly or fortnightly bill falls due and is taken by direct debit before your last monthly bill.

In these cases, your first weekly or fortnightly bill will show the previous bill amount in the “Previous Charges” section, however rest assured we will direct debit the payment for that bill on the original due date, and the weekly or fortnightly bill amount separately as per the notification on the bill.

The main reasons you will be moved to monthly billing are:

• Your direct debit has been cancelled by yourself or by us.
• You have changed your correspondence method from email to paper.
• Your smart meter has not communicated and provided a meter reading for 2 bills in a row.
• You have added gas or broadband to your account.

We will advise you if we need to change your billing frequency to monthly for any reason.

If you set up a new direct debit when you change to weekly or fortnightly billing, we will debit the last bill amount on the due date of the bill or 3 days after your direct debit is set up if it’s due by then (unless you pay it manually by the due date).

If you cancel SmoothPay to change to weekly or fortnightly billing, we will leave the same direct debit authority in place and any outstanding balances will be taken on the due date of the original bill or after 3 days if you haven’t made arrangements to pay the balance off over time.

Paper bills by post generally takes 3 days or more to arrive, and because weekly and fortnightly bills are due in 3 days, receiving the bill by email allows you time to review it and call us if there are any issues, before payment is taken.

Email billing is also free and convenient, so no waiting for your bill to arrive in the post, and no paper bill fees.