Does this sound too much...Gas Bill

Jailey

Hi

We currently have our Gas and Electricity through Powergen. Are electricity is a little high but acceptable as I have a TV and PC on most of the day but our Gas seems to be extortinate. Our first problem is that we were underbilled and have built up a huge amount oweing but the main problem is that Powergen reckon we use £90 a month in Gas. We live in a 3 bed terraced house that has Gas central heating/hot water and a Gas fire, all other appliances are electric. We have the Heating/hotwater on for 3hours in the morning and 1 and a half hours at night, with the occasional top up during the day say another 1-2 hours a day. On average its about 6 hours a day through the winter anyway, obviously no heating in the summer. The gas fire only gets used during the coldest months for maybe 5 hours a week tops. To me this does not seem to be excessive use. The house has loft insullation and double glazing also. We have been in this house for a year and a half now, are previous house was the same size and we had the hot water on 24/7 and the heating always on using the thermostat and our gas bills were £35 a month, infact when we left we were in credit. Now I know that there has been an increase in gas prices but they have not up more than double.

Can anyone give advice on this as we have now built up a balance of £550 on our bill and there is no chance I can afford it.

Many Thanks

Matt

Cardew

You say "Powergen reckon we use £90 a month" Are you saying that you are not using that amount of gas? Obviously that can be checked by looking at your meter readings.

Secondly, is the £90 a month an average throughout the year or just the last month? or including an element to pay back the debit balance of £550?

The big question is how warm do you have the house?

An average of £90 a month is obviously far too much for a 3 bed terrac but, although high, it would be quite possible to use that amount in cold winter month.

Jailey

The meter readings match up with what powergen is saying. The £90 is an average taken over the year, so our annual consumption is £1080. The thermostat is set to 21 degrees in the winter and turned right down in the summer. When we fist moved into the property there was a prepayment meter which we kept for about a month and we put about £10 a week on using that. I can only think that this meter is either faulty or not set up right. But Powergen are not having any of it and say that 99.9% of meters are correct. I have spoken to Enerywatch who agree its very high and are going to look into it, I just hope that they can come up with something.

socmwils23

W have a 3 bed semi like yourselves with the heating currently on for 2 hours in the morning 7-9 and from 16:00 to 21:30. We dont have a gas fire and hardly ever switch the heating on outside of the timer hours. As an idea we currently pay scottish power £23 per month for gas and £23 for electric (like you we have tv's and pc's running all the time) It sounds like your bill is very high and needs looking into.

If you have previous bills and usage data try feeding it into sites like uswitch to see if other companies will charge that rate.

Jailey

If you go by the usage according to the meters then its all correct, thats why I think its a faulty meter. The people who lived here before had a prepayment meter and that used about £10 a week. its only since the new credit meter has been put in that the consumption seems to have doubled. I have looked at the bills and the meter reads and according to them we were actual using more gas through the summer than we have been doing during the winter. Our average units used per day during the past cold 3 months was 7.9 units where as our average for the year was over 12units a day. Although its only a small chance that the meter is faulty there is still a chance.

Cardew

£1,080 pa is clearly far too high and the summer/winter ratio is inexplicable.

I thought it could be that you have a metric meter and Powergen were charging you as if you had an Imperial meter(has happened before!) which would mean that your bill would be 2.83 times too high.

However if you have a metric meter and average 12 units a day for the year it means that your consumption is approx 58,000kWh so £1080 is about right. 7.9 units a day in the winter is £50-60 a month which wouldn't be too bad.

The only things I can think of is you have a gas leak after the meter; but you should be able to smell it. Could your gas fire have a leak and the gas be venting up the chimney? You could check by looking at the meter with everything switched off. Or a hot water leak.

Bri_2205

When the meter was changed was an advice slip left? Sometimes there is a sticker on the meter advising what reading it was installed on. There is a possibility that the start reading for this meter is wrong.

It is very rare for a metric gas meter to be faulty.

Jailey

The meter was installed at zero

beeniemac

I would be looking at getting your heating system/fire looked at

Jailey

Ok there is a development, I have just received a phone calll from powergen saying that energywatch has spoken to them and they have looked at our account. Apparantly somehow out meter reading is 1500 units too high and he is going to change it and recalcualte our bill. This would mean that our gas bill has been £450 too high so far. I shall wait to see how it actually effects our bill when the recalculated one comes. Its got to see that the power of energy watch actually has some effect.

I will keep you posted on what goes on

Thanks

Matt

Rikki

I have had no end of problems with powergen. I have needed to use Energywatch three times and each time they were successful in sorting things out.