Help! My electricity bill is just.. unreal!

deni_

Hello! My name is Deni.

Me and my boyfriend used to live in a very small one bedroom appartament in Chiswick (London). And by small I mean... SMALL. It was almost like a studio. The lettings agency told it was it was around 20 sq m. I know... SMALL.

Our electricity was with Southern Electric (we did not have gas at all). Our first bill was for 3 month and amounted 80 pounds (July 2008, August 2008, September 2008), our second bill was for 3 months as well and teh amount was 110 pounds (October 2008, November 2008, December 2008).

Then we stopped receiving bills until July 2009. And the bill was for 1200 pounds! How is that even possible? For a studio appartment...... I was in shock. I have the breakdown here with me and it is ridiculous:

18 DEC 2008 - 20 MAR2009 - 938.53 pounds
21 MARCH - 23 JUNE 2009 -248.11 pounds

and here comes the most ridiculous of it all

24 JUNE 2009 - 30 JUNE 2009 (6 days!) - 160.32 pounds

Taking into account it was summer, therefore no heating... and I can say no cooking, because we were appartment hunting during the whole day... and no waching machine usage... too busy.. and again - it was a studio-sized 1 bed...

On the breakdown it is written though YOUR BILL IS BASED ON AN ACTUAL METER READING

My question is.. What can we do? What could have gone wrong.. Souther electric belive there is nothing wrong... yeah right. Before we pay the bill we will most likely contact Consumer Focus (ex Eenergywatch).. But do you have any other suggestions?

Thank you,
Deni

Fire_Fox

Are ALL the bills based on actual readings or just the last one - are you playing catch up for underpaying for the last year? Have you checked the start and end readings yourself to make sure it's the correct meter etc? Were you on the standard (expensive) tariff or did you switch tariff/ supplier? What about hot water - do you have an immersion on timer or constant?

deni_

All the units of energy from december until june on the breakdown are followed by an (E) which I believe stands for an estimated amount. Taking this into account I have no idea why they claim it is based on actual readings.

We took only the last meter reading and told them what it was over the phone.

The tariff is Economy 7 for the whole period.

Even if we are playing catch up for underpaying for the last year - 1200 pounds for 1 year for a studio flat.. isn't it too much?

We never knew where the boiler was or whatever heated the water.. I mean it was 100% not in the appartment. We tried to ask about it the property management agency like... 15 times. They only said "it was somewhere in the building" (it was a building with around 20 flats). We asked the neighbours.. again "somewhere around here" was teh answer.

deni_

Btw I have scanned my bill but the forum does not allow me to post links..

Bark01

There are a few things that could be an issue here:

As all previous bills are estimated you are probably as someone said playing catch up to previous estimates that were lower than they should be.

Is the first read for when you moved in an estimate? If so it could be estimated lower than it actually was. The previous tenants may have given a low reading when they left to get a reduced bill. Not sure how you remedy this, ask to see previous meter reads from before you moved in and see if any are actual reads.

The majority of people do not use E7 meters in the way they were intended so actually end up paying more than they expect to. Electric is cheap over night and expensive during the day. Do you have a hot water tank or does your hot water never run out (can't remeber the technical term for this). If you have a hot water tank and it comes on outside the hours for cheap electricty then this can cause a large bill, likewise not having a hot water tank will cause high bills and you shouldn't be on E7 Also using appliances like washing machines and dryers outside of the cheap hours won't help.