NPower Final Gas Bill Confusion! Help?!

Spinky100

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone can help me with this - I've just moved out of a flat that I have been renting for the past six months, and have received a final gas bill from NPower for a whopping £203!!!! :eek: I cannot for the life of me work out how it is so much, I'm not sure if I've used a ridiculous amount of gas or if Npower are just a total rip off!!

What I can work out from the bill is that I've used 140 units between the 6th November and the 19th March (which doesn't sound like a lot), which has equated to 4416 kWh.
The first 3520 have been charged at 8.360p and the other 896 kWh have been charged at 2.488p.
This has totaled £332.38, + £51.10 from a previous bill = £383.48 for 6 months worth of gas in a tiny two bedroom flat I live in with my partner. We have a couple of showers each a day and only ever had the heating on for an hour in the morning and a couple of hours in the evening.

I have been paying a direct debit of £30 a month so have chipped off £180 from the total of £383.48, so still have £203 left to pay.
To cover for the amount they have charged us, we would've needed to pay £64 a month which seems crazy for such low gas usage.

I can’t seem to find what Tariff I’m on – it doesn’t say on any of the bills which isn't very helpful!!

Does this bill seem completely outrageous to anyone else??! And is there anything I can do about it? I've moved into a new flat which is with Southern so it's not like I'll re-coup the costs from Npower over the summer.

Any advice would be very much appreciated!!

Thanks
Spinky

ALIBOBSY

It doesn't sound too high to me, especially as it includes just about the coldest winter we have had for decades.

Are you sure about the readings they have used? If so it sounds about right to me. Mind you we live in a semi and there are 5 of us so would use more gas than you.

Hopefully someone will be along with a simular property to yours to advice.

ali x

notbritishgas

Hi Spinky. One reason for the high bill is that you have fallen foul of Npowers Gas sculpting. That is where they charge more kwh at the high rate in winter, and unfortunately your 6 months covered the winter period.
Normall y you would benefit in the summer when they charge less at the high rate but as you will not be there you have lost out.
Secondly you have been charged as if you had an imperial meter (100's cu feet) make sure that is the type of meter in the property, if it was a metric meter (m3) then the bill would be less.

DirectDebacle

One of the joys of having gas supplied by npower is that during the months of Nov-Feb over 75% of the expensive primary block units are charged, leading to higher winter bills than most other suppliers.

Thus your bill shows most of the units used (3520) charged at this higher rate. Most of the competition would have charged around half this (1714 @381 per month over 4.5 months of your bill) and would have meant a winter bill of around £230 plus £51.10 from your previous bill. That would have been £281.10.

For this reason it doesn't pay for low users in particular, to be with npower over the winter. Best time to be with npower is from April/May - Sept/Oct when they charge hardly anything at the higher rate (47kWh) per month.