To switch or not after 6 months?

cadenza82

We moved house 6 months ago, and when we moved, we changed from the previous owners supplier (Scottish Power) to nPower who we had before we moved. When we switched, someone came to read the meter.

We paid by montly direct debit of £115, but when the six-monthly bill came last week, we have underpaid by approximately £350!!! Now, I accept that the winter has been bad, but even so, that's a long way off.

nPower say that it'll probably even itself out because we use less gas in the summer - I accept that to a point, but I can't see that will compensate for the underpayment in the past 6 months. They said we could also consider increasing our monthly payment to £157 which would pay most of the 'debt' off before next winter, but they warned us we may then have overpaid.

Anyway, we did a comparison and found that based on what we'd paid/used already, we'd save about £100 a year by switching to British Gas...but we're not sure we should be doing this; if we did, we'd have to pay off the £350 to nPower in one go. We really can't afford tyo be left in a position again of having underpaid by so much!

Dilemma......!

David

slipthru

Have you checked the meter readings are corect?

cadenza82

slipthru wrote: »

Have you checked the meter readings are corect?

Sadly they are correct. We've never had this problem before and have switched supplier regularly in the past; I can't understand how the figures can be so far 'out'!

liam8282

How big is your house, how many people live in it, what do you use gas & electric for?

cadenza82

Well, I don't think we use that much gas or electricity at all. We're not paying any more here than we were before we moved, but before we weren't underpaying by £350 over 6 months. Even in the coldest weather the gas central heating and hot water was only coming on for about 4 hours a day. We've been paying £76 for electricity and £48 for gas, but nPower have reduced that to an overall figure of £115 for the next 6 months because of the summer months.

The house is simply semi-detached 3 bedroom with 3 adults living in it (two of which are OAP's so in fairness they do get the winter fuel allowance). We use the central heating in 3 rooms, and when we moved in, we had all the double glazing replaced. We have a gas hob and electric oven. We don't have lots of expensive electic-guzzling gadgets either.

liam8282

If the meter readings are correct, it must either be the usage compared to your old house that is different or the tariff you are on isn't very good.

When you moved property nPower may have treated you as a new customer and just put you on a basic standard tariff, whereas you said in your old property you switched regularly, presumably to the best tariff available using the comparison sites.

Try a comparison site and compare your usage to see what other companies would charge.

cadenza82

liam8282 wrote: »

Try a comparison site and compare your usage to see what other companies would charge.

What figures should we use to do this because obviously we know what we've paid/used in the past 6 months, but we also know what the direct debit is we've been paying (which obviously hasn't been enough). Even then would it be better to switch and pay nPower off?

cadenza82

jull wrote: »

So tell us!

How else are we supposed to advise you if you keep us in the dark.

In fairness, I've given the figures above. For the past 6 months, we've paid a monthly direct debit of £124 and have come out with an underpayment of £350, so in effect to cover the costs we should have been paying about £182 a month. The monthly direct debit has now been reduced to £115 because of the summer months.

KimYeovil

cadenza82 wrote: »

In fairness, I've given the figures above. For the past 6 months, we've paid a monthly direct debit of £124 and have come out with an underpayment of £350, so in effect to cover the costs we should have been paying about £182 a month. The monthly direct debit has now been reduced to £115 because of the summer months.

Why don't you just switch to quarterly billing if you hate the idea of spreading the cost?

£350 is just £60 extra per month - that should more than easily be covered over summer on the £124/115. What do you use over summer that is going to make you use more than £64 per month?

(<shakes head, completely confused> I don't know. Now we have people complaining about suppliers trying to force them to spread the costs of their heating over the year. Oh well, makes a change!)

cadenza82

KimYeovil wrote: »

Why don't you just switch to quarterly billing if you hate the idea of spreading the cost?

£350 is just £60 extra per month - that should more than easily be covered over summer on the £124/115. What do you use over summer that is going to make you use more than £64 per month?

(<shakes head, completely confused> I don't know. Now we have people complaining about suppliers trying to force them to spread the costs of their heating over the year. Oh well, makes a change!)

I'm not complaining about spreading the cost - it's a good idea - I don't have a problem with that at all. If over the summer months a combination of the reduced direct debit and using less gas/electric balances out the current £350 underpayment for the first 6 months then that's fine - again, I don't have a problem with that. What I'm sceptical about is whether the combination of those things will actually balance it out.

t0rt0ise

If it were me I'd be looking at why the electricity usage is so high. Sounds like far too much to me.