Confused by Gas

missyp284

After speaking to my mum last night I'm wondering about the accuracy of my gas bills.

I live in a two bedroom ground floor flat and work full time, so my heating isn't on all day. It's turned off alltogether at night and I usually have it on for 45 mins in the mornings and it's timed to come on at 5ish until about 10pm.

Now my mum lives in quite a larde three bedroomed semi and is retired so her heating is on pretty much all day every day.

I have just received a bill from my supplier advising my monthly direct debit needs to go up from £43 a month to £85. I appreciate energy costs have risen a lot recently, BUT my mum is paying only £30 a month for her gas

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how this can be? I'm baffled :think:

Fire_Fox

What about your hot water usage? Do you both use your timer properly? How warm do you keep your respective properties? How well insulated is each house/ flat? Are you with the same supplier/ tariff? Have you both read your meters recently?

edithbella

Do you have your bills for the past 12 months and are they based on actual readings? If so you should be able to calculate what your annual usage is, then work out what that should cost, divide by 12 and you have your monthly payments (always assuming that you are not in debit, in which case they would add that amount too). If you find that this is a lot less than what your supplier is asking for then there could be two reasons.
One is that your bills are based on estimated readings which have been under-estimated for a while. Always send in correct readings.
Another reason could be the same as the reason why I cancelled my direct debit to British Gas.They would regularly try to raise my monthly payments with no justification. I would have to telephone with my own figures to hand and they always backed down. In the end they did it once too often and I cancelled the direct debit and claimed a tidy sum of mine that they wanted to hold onto. I know direct debit is cheaper, but only if you don't mind them keeping your cash in their bank account for months on end.
I would get in touch with them and ask them to justify the increase.

didi75

I just moved into a flat that has E7 meter there. i have been in for abt 2months and i realised i am spending btw £20 - 25 a week. the whole house is on electricity, but the point is its just myself and my 3yrs old son, i work at night (which means the E7 idea is totally useless to me) for half of the day time i am not in the house and can bearly heat a room even when i am in. the meter is a prepaid meter and supplier is scotish power. I am seriously thinking of changing from E7 to standard rate and probably change to monthly charges as well and cap my spending cos the flat is always cold and needs heating throughout the day. Pls any suggestions on what my options are and what cost i might incurr. Thanks

Capistan

missyp284 wrote: »

After speaking to my mum last night I'm wondering about the accuracy of my gas bills.

I live in a two bedroom ground floor flat and work full time, so my heating isn't on all day. It's turned off alltogether at night and I usually have it on for 45 mins in the mornings and it's timed to come on at 5ish until about 10pm.

Now my mum lives in quite a larde three bedroomed semi and is retired so her heating is on pretty much all day every day.

I have just received a bill from my supplier advising my monthly direct debit needs to go up from £43 a month to £85. I appreciate energy costs have risen a lot recently, BUT my mum is paying only £30 a month for her gas

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how this can be? I'm baffled :think:

Sounds too much, a lot to much.
Unfortunately you have given no details in your post so well, I don't see how you expect people to help you.
Not many mind reader here!!

DVardysShadow

missyp284 wrote: »

... I have just received a bill from my supplier advising my monthly direct debit needs to go up from £43 a month to £85. I appreciate energy costs have risen a lot recently, BUT my mum is paying only £30 a month for her gas

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how this can be? I'm baffled :think:

Waste of time comparing Direct Debits. Direct Debits can be high or low for many reasons - accumulated arrears or credits, deliberate loading of arrears or credits to a customer account - estimated accounts.

Compare consumption using actual meter readings

Premier_2

didi75 wrote: »

I just moved into a flat that has E7 meter there. i have been in for abt 2months and i realised i am spending btw £20 - 25 a week. the whole house is on electricity, but the point is its just myself and my 3yrs old son, i work at night (which means the E7 idea is totally useless to me) for half of the day time i am not in the house and can bearly heat a room even when i am in. the meter is a prepaid meter and supplier is scotish power. I am seriously thinking of changing from E7 to standard rate and probably change to monthly charges as well and cap my spending cos the flat is always cold and needs heating throughout the day. Pls any suggestions on what my options are and what cost i might incurr. Thanks

Tell me, what was the reasoning behind you resurrecting this thread that is almost
1 year old,

is entitled 'Confused by gas' when you have a question about an all electric property?

didi75

cos the issue then is still there and hasn't been resolved yet.

Premier_2

didi75 wrote: »

cos the issue then is still there and hasn't been resolved yet.

That doesn't make any sense either.

This thread is entitled "confused by gas" and was created in January 2009

You joined it in December 2009, when you joined MSE, and ressurected it to start a discussion on electricity and changing from E7 to non E7 regarding a property you first occupied approximately October 2009, some 9 months after the previous post in this thread.

... and you've now taken almost a further 3 months to respond...


Edit: your decision to start a new thread regarding your specific query was very wise.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=2300723