Gas & Electric Meters - Help!

draven_girl

Hello.

I'm after some help and advise on Gas and Electricity meters.

Myself and my partner are about to move into a rented two bed, two reception terrace house, with gas and electricity meters.

I've never used them before, who provides the best and most cost effective payment plan with pay as you go meters? I believe the meters are currently with Southern Electric.

We are both working professionals and I'm wondering how much we should budget per month toward the cost?

Can anyone help???

Thanks

Fire_Fox

Price up Ebico for prepayment meters, as to budget that is a 'how long is a piece of string' question! How well insulated is the property, how long and how frequent are your showers/ baths, how warm do you like the house to be and for how many hours per day, are you happy to air dry laundry or are you a tumble queen?

draven_girl

Well we don't have a tumble dryer I tend to dry everything outside or on an airer, the property has double glazing so I'm hoping all this helps....I'll give Ebico a whirl though, thanks for the advise.!

Fire_Fox

Loft insulation to current specifications, cavity wall? Heating is by far the biggest user of energy so good insulation and how warm you like to keep the house will make a massive difference to your bills.

Mankysteve

Dnt just try one supplier do the usually money super market search and find the cheapest.

KimYeovil

You should also contact the landlord and tell them you would like to replace the meters with credit meters. The bills and any arrears are the responsibility of the corresponding tenants. There should be no problem having standard meters.

spinningsheep

In hindsight, I honestly do wish we had prepayment meters from the get go when I rented my first house in 2006, but I am now used to the swing of splitting your consumption over the year, so we are in debit at the moment by about £150 on gas and electricity, so we would need to pay this off to change over or have the meter taking debt off each week which I don't want. I hate having bills, rather "pay as I go" but thats just me, I know alot of people are the complete opposite. If you haven't lived in your own place before and have no current supplier, they will set your DD at an average level (for me in a 2 bed mid terrace Npower set them at £30 elec and £40 gas, this was far too low and ended up getting me in a right mess) so I would set them as high as you can afford, better to overpay and be in credit than be hit by an unexpected DD increase.

markharding557

ebico will be cheaper for pp gas,the electric will depend on what area you are in

Mankysteve

I found BG was the cheapest in ma area.

draven_girl

I actually did a search on U Switch over the weekend and Ebico was the cheapest by £70 annual. Im guessing as we're both working professionals we'd be looking at £30 for both gas and electric so £60 in total a month, or is this me being optimistic???

I dont have much idea as previously I've always paid by DD, and the last rental we've been in for year the bills were included, so I'm feeling a little out of the loop on the utilities.

Thanks for all the advise )