Student Housing

David_G_5

Hey everyone,

2nd year student here. I'm about to move into a house with friends for the year (possibly next year as well)

We will be paying our own electricity and gas bills. We have no idea how much these will be, even an approximate price range. As a result, it's very difficult to use the price comparison engines to find out what the best deal might be for us.

Hopefully we'll be at the low end, being penny pinching students - but there are 6 of us, so perhaps it will work out more than the average household?

Can anyone point me in a direction to start. It looks like we'd have to act pretty sharpish if a capped deal would work out best for us?

Many thanks in advance,

David

kjsmith7

Hi there - I'm a student too! There is four of us in our house; it's a decent sized mid-terrace, just to give you an idea. 4 beds, 2 baths, 1 kitchen, living room, dining room. We pay by Direct Debit roughly £10 each for gas, £10 for electric, as ours come to about £40 a month. Sometimes there'll a little bit more than that, but because we've gotten a discount by paying by direct debit and effectively have "saved" the money towards paying it, it's always relatively easy to find an extra £20 between the lot of us.

If yours is similar, then estimate it at around £10 a person for gas and for elec, so Direct Debits of £50-60 perhaps? If you get a credit balance, they will refund it, so it's all good... Might be a bit more due to the price increases...

As for TV and Internet, we go with Virgin Media (no phone line required therefore no line rental charges and no "Who made this 2 hour long mobile phone call to Nigeria?" conversations :P) - deals are constantly changing, so try and haggle over the phone to get the best one!! We pay £44 a month for XL TV (all the channels) and XL Broadband (20 meg - but it's usually less due to contention ratios), so if you were to pay the same it'd be around £7 for you lot.

Hope that helps!

PS: When you ring up your new suppliers (which you should do as soon as you move in), ask them to estimate your amounts for you. This may be just right or well off, as they will use the previous tenants consumption to estimate from, or sometimes a 'ready reckoner' of sorts where they ask you questions. Make sure you take a meter reading for gas & elec and give it to them when you phone, and also give it to your landlord: saves LOTS of problems in the long run!! For the first couple of months, submit a meter reading for each utility a month, and then just submit one every quarter/three months to make sure you're paying the right amount and don't build up excessive credit/debit balances.