Massive bill received - help please!!

Sharon_Dace

We have just received out latest bill and nearly had a heart attack! almost 4K! We have no way of paying this amount, and are really worried. We have had our meter read at the end of every quarter since we moved to our current house two years ago, and have paid the stated amounts, even though on our bills it has said it was an estimate. We now get a huge bill which is an actual meter reading, and does tally with our meter. There is not a covering letter, just a normal bill, payable in two weeks! This is impossible for us. Has anybody out there had this problem and if so, have the energy companies given you lots of extra time to pay? Do you have any advice? Thanks

Magentasue

Bit too late to say that you should always check your meter when the bill has an estimated reading on it. Assuming you have used this electricity (is it gas as well?) you must have realised you were underpaying, didn't you? I ask because I wonder if you have saved up something and it's not enough or you have nothing put by at all?

You should be given two years to pay this back. Your supplier should work out a monthly payment (1/12 of your annual bill) and then add on 1/24 of the almost £4000. Ring them and negotiate.

Meanwhile, £4000 plus whatever else you have paid is a huge amount of electricity - is this just for one house?

brysiewysie

Check the meter serial number(s) details match those on the bill too, just in case there's a crossed meter issue.

kazwookie

A large amount of electricity, what size house have you got?

Premier_2

Good grief, £4k worth of energy on top of what you've already paid (national average is about £1200 p.a. at present I think) - that's some consumption you've been using for the past 2 years.

Surely you realised you were using huge amounts of energy but weren't paying for it all? Now it's time to start saving, both money and energy. You have to pay for what you've used.

Perhaps its time to turn the heating off and start wearing 2 jumpers ... :cool:

Vestra

How long has this built up over? Are you running something using a lot of power? I was speaking to a customer recently in a similar situation it turned out they installed a swimming pool about a year ago.

spiro

What helps make the bill so large is that they wil have charged all the catch up units at the current much higher price. They said on the BBC a couple of weeks ago that they can do that. In terms of how long you have to pay it back that is down to you supplier, there is nothing stopping them that I am aware of demanding it all.

You say you have had you meter read every quarter, do these readings appear on you bill because if they do then the estimate can't be much out as at most they would have estimated 12 weeks worth of consumption.

littletommytucker

If you are with British Gas then any payment plan would spread that out over 12 months for you, provided you were paying your average monthly consumption on top of that. 12 months is the longest there Payment Scheme systems will spread it out over... if you get through to a nice call centre workers, they may manually overide your amount to something more reasonable, but it would get automatically reassesed every 6 months, and increase to try and claim back the debit within a 12 month period. So unless you can afford to pay it back over 12 months, you will be on the phone to them negotiating quite alot for the next few years. Just go onto the call and be EXTRA nice... remember its all down to the discretion of the person your speaking to. Company policy would be just to spread it over 12 months, so getting angry and asking to speak to a manager would probably just result in you being put in your place and stated the terms and conditions that it is your responsibility to check your readings. Maybe a prepayment meter would be something to consider? x