Excessive Gas Reading?

lamaar75

I have been paying my gas and electricity costs ( combined ) of £50 per month for the last year.

I live in a three bed mid terrace, 2 adults, 2 kids and my only gas comes from a combi boiler.

I use scottish power and they have never asked me for a meter reading until now ( they have always estimated it ). I have just checked this and it is showing 14555. Their last estimation was 9550. This is a lot of units difference.

I work this out at £1500 I owe them. As I have already been paying them £25 a month for the last three years, this totals nearly £2400, averaging £800 per year.

This is very excessive. How does this compare with other people?

Cardew

£800 per year(£66 a month) is high but not excessively so. Some people according to their posts on this forum pay more than that.

It depends on a number of factors:

How well your house is insulated - particularly roof.

Old inefficient boiler

People at home all day.

How warm you have your rooms

How cold the your area is - Scotland is colder than Southern England.

Use of Hot Water - lots of baths etc.

You could have some scope to negotiate a reduction in your outstanding debt as they have been estimating bills for 3 years. However in the small print it normally tells you to check estimated readings and contact them with the correct readings.

cdon

I pay more than £50 per month and it's just the two of us. £50 per month seems very low for a household of 4 people. Prices have gone up around 40-50% in the last couple of years. If you haven't had an accurate bill in all that time it could be that you have been underpaying by quite a bit. Do you have any accurate readings that you may have taken yourself?

vivaladiva

We pay around £80 per month (2 adults 4 kids in a non cavity walled 3 bed semi). £50 per month seems a little low, but it strikes me that the supplier has been a little irresponsible not gettting your meter read. I thought by law they had to read it every so often - but I might be wrong.