EDF wants to increase bills to 4x what i'm paying now

scarletwoman

Hi there,
new on the forums so maybe this has been mentioned before.
My husband and I live in a 1 bedroom flat with gas central heating, the cooker is electric but the hobs work on gas.
Our supplier is EDF and we used to pay £ 24 a month by direct debit. I have received a letter from EDF on Friday, saying that, given our gas usage, they had reviewed our bills and, from the end of June, we will have to pay £ 80 a month instead!
Given the size of the flat I really do not understand where they're coming from. Can anyone tell me if this is a normal amount to pay?
Also we found out last year that they had been invoicing us for the wrong property for about 6 years. What happened is that they had the correct address except for the postcode and they were billing us for a flat in West London, instead of East London and because of that, they thought we owed them £ 2000! This was finally sorted but it took them about 3 months to rectify and they ended up giving us money back. I am wondering if they are attempting to claw that money back.
Incidentally our electricity supplier is also EDF and we never had any problem. They increased the direct debit for the electricity from £ 24 to £ 40 a couple of years ago and we put it down to the recession.
But a quadrifold increase for the gas????
I would appreciate any tip to deal with this problem, many thanks.

DVardysShadow

scarletwoman wrote: »

I would appreciate any tip to deal with this problem, many thanks.

Look at your meters and check it from there.

£80/month or £24/month is neither here nor there. It's the meters which matter - and had you been comparing your meters with the bills, I dare say you would not have had the problems you did have over 6 years.

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

You almost certainly have built up a debit balance because £24 is much too low. The £80 is calculated to pay enough to cover the usage and pay back what you owe.

as an example:

You should have been paying £50 a month to cover your usage and you have run up a debt of £360 because you were only paying £24. So by paying £80 you are paying off your £360 debt at £30 a month and covering your consumption of £50 a month.

diable

Also the bad winter could have sent their estimated gas usage on your property way over, if you don't use that much gas it will even itself out as mine has gone down from £120pm to £88pm

scarletwoman

Well, what happened is that we never received bills for 6 years although we always paid EDF by DD. Apparently our address was not on the National Grid. So they had to check how much we paid in total for the last 6 years and how much we were supposed to have paid and they ended up refunding us £ 888 in November last year.
As far as the usage is concerned, it is as follows:
4 Feb 2010 to 5 Feb 2010: 63 kwh
5 Feb 2010 to 26 Mar 2010: 3332 kwh
26 Mar 2010 to 4 May 2010: 2672 kwh
Is it normal for a 1 bedroom flat in East London, with both of us at work all day?

KimYeovil

A bit over £200 for 6000kWh over a winter quarter, yes, that's an okay, average usage. The fact that you are out at work all day is not that significant - so do most households!

If anything, your useage is quite modest.

mattcanary

Scarletwoman, was the gas meter changed on either 4 or 5 Feb? Otherwise, I don;t understand why a bill was produced for one day.

That suggests the meter details on your bill are incorrect somewhere, meaning the bills will be wrong.

What were the actual meter readings, and do the meter details on your bills all match up?
What is the correct meter serial number (found on the meter itself)? Does this match up with that on the bills?

scarletwoman

Matt,
no, the meter was not changed on 4 or 5 February but I think their prices did change around those dates hence the bill for 1 day. Also there does not seem to be a serial number on the meter. I was asked to provide it but neither myself or my husband could find it and when we got a meter reading by the company, the EDF guy could not find it either!
I'll go with it if most ppl here think it's a normal price, I was just surprised at the big jump from one amount to the other.
Thanks folks!

molerat

scarletwoman wrote: »

Well, what happened is that we never received bills for 6 years although we always paid EDF by DD. Apparently our address was not on the National Grid. So they had to check how much we paid in total for the last 6 years and how much we were supposed to have paid and they ended up refunding us £ 888 in November last year.
As far as the usage is concerned, it is as follows:
4 Feb 2010 to 5 Feb 2010: 63 kwh
5 Feb 2010 to 26 Mar 2010: 3332 kwh
26 Mar 2010 to 4 May 2010: 2672 kwh
Is it normal for a 1 bedroom flat in East London, with both of us at work all day?

Are those figures from estimated bills or actual readings ?

scarletwoman

4 Feb has a little C next to it, no idea what that is.
5 Feb Actual
26 Mar Estimated
4 May Actual

mattcanary

c stands for customer reading. Did you provide EDF with a reading around this time?