Gas & Elec bill confusion!

WestieFan

Help!
I have two days off and decided to have a look at changing my gas & elec supplier.

I am with Scottish Power for both, on a bog-standard tariff, and pay a fixed monthly payment - Elec £62.50 and Gas £26 per month. (I had been paying off arrears on the Elec). However, I got a letter in December saying they wanted £73 now for the Elec, as estimated usage from Aug 05 - Aug 06 was £511. This seemed a bit steep to me. I phoned them today and they couldn't give me a sensible explanation.

I asked them to give me an estimate of total usage per year. I was told Gas = 731 units and Elec = 4527 units.

I went into the Energysaving helpline site and noticed they estimate the total for BOTH at £537 per year.

At present I am paying £750 Elec + £312 Gas Total £1062
I am so confused. I feel somebody is very wrong somewhere and am nervous of switching in case I end up worse off.

Any advice would be welcome please...........

lisyloo

Do you have any old bills at all?
From them you should be able to work out your annual usage.
Over a year is best to avoid seasonality (like not having the heating on in summer).

Strictly speaking you should keep bills for 6 years.
In practice 1 or 2 years should be ok (but keep any final bills from old suppliers).

This is because legally someone can chase you for debts up to 6 years in arrears, so 6 years worth of bills means you have proof of what you've paid. In practice if you check your bills every month, a mistake in unliekly to come to light years afterwards, but a years or twos worth is useful for budgeting and switching.

WestieFan

I have some bills but some are missing. I don't know whether its Scottish Power or Royal Mail. That's why I asked them to give me a figure of what I have used over a year.
I didn't know about the 6 year thing, usually when I get my annual one in May I chuck out all the previous year's. I will watch for that in future, thanks!

I thought that they would at least be able to give me an accurate figure for what I have used over the last year.
My head is now starting to spin......... I can't understand how the energyhelpine say I am spending £537 based on the kws I put in, when in actual fact I am spending £1062.


ps We are out all day and we have gas central heating and a gas cooker.

Woby_Tide

bear in mind that a lot of the comparison sites want the figures in kWh, electric units are kWh, gas units need to be calculated to work out the actual kWh, i.e. 731 units of gas is approx 8000 kWh(potentially more if it's an imperial rather than metric gas meter)

WestieFan

Thanks for that woby, I worked out the gas kwh and put info into the comparison site again.

It seems I can get a cheaper deal but I am a bit wary of setting the wheels in motion...... all the different tariffs and prices are double-dutch and it seems that now may not be the best time to switch (have just read one of Martin's articles) due to price increases coming soon.

Decisions, Decisions..........:think:

Brutus_Beefcake

I switched from British Gas to Npower in November and my prices seem to have gone up from about £40 a month to £100 a month. I don't know what is going on.

Does anyone know the current prices for British Gas? I am making an Excel spreadsheet that calculates how much my bill really is.

I wish I never switched but did so as British Gas were lumping my Homecare together with my gas bill and I couldn't understand the bill. I just wanted to separate the 2.