Extremely High Electric Bill

Sunny17

Hello. I live in a 3 bedroom flat with two other people. We got an extremely high electric bill for January to March...it was over £820. Over the winter we had four storage heaters on...none of which were on high. We don't have a tumble dryer and each have one shower a day, so I wouldn't say our useage was particularly high. The bill for a year ago during the same time period was £250. I obviously know bills have gone up, but it seems ridiculous. I phoned Southern Electric and was on the phone to them for over half an hour. They admitted themselves that the bill was extremely high for our property but said if that's what the meter said then it must be right.
I don't understand how it could be so much...I know many other people with similar properties and it's nowhere near as much money. Does anyone know what we can do next? Is it possible to get them to check the meter is working properly? Or anything else? It seems such a large amount to pay.

Vestra

The readings they are billing you on, either the reading last time or the reading this time, are either estimated?

They will check the meter but will charge you about £70 which will be refunded if the meter is inaccurate.

KimYeovil

How much of that was day use? How much was night use?

As it was so cold you would not want all of the heater controls on high - only overnight store high, day release slow and low. If you had the release on high, did you use up all the stored heat and end up using them as panel heaters?

Cardew

As Vestra states, it is very probable that this £820 bill is a 'catch up' bill. That means that previous bill(s) could have been under-estimated and you are paying for the shortfall on those bills this time. - a very common occurance.

Similarly your £250 bill for the same period a year ago is very low for an all electric house, and could have been based on under-estimated readings; so neither bill is useful for comparison purposes.

R.Deringer

Just proves you how careful you have to be with bills, always alert.

Sunny17

The last bills were not estimated, they were read by us from the meter so it wasn't a catch up bill...we do check our meter regualrly. The largest amount was for stored heat energy which the electric company said was storage heaters and immersion heater....but how this amount went up by so much is a mystery to me.

KimYeovil

I spent way more than three times as much on heating this year as last year.

neas

say you spent 250 quid last year... if it was a colder winter or they were ion more.. i could perceive you 'using' 450 quid worth as opposed to last year.

Add on that bills rose about 30% could potentially put you at:

450*1.3 = about 600 quid.. so yea does seem a bit high.. i'd be checking your daily usage niow to see what it is.. just open it every day to see how its tallying up.