Utility bill dispute between housemate and I

ste_coxy

well I messaged her as we're both at work saying the following:

2b honest I don’t wanna be paying anymore than I already am especially when I’m barely in the flat. We should probably discuss this properly as I don't think it's fair.

she's replied with:

“well I had a look at changing providers and the plan we are on is still the cheapest, the d/d can go back to £30 once the debt is cleared. Can we not just use what is in the joint account and then put the extra to it? Don’t understand why the water has shot up guess it’s the cost of living?”

She’s clearly having a laugh here. The electric has a debt on it as more has been used (by her) than we’ve been paying in. Same with the water!

poppysarah

Turn water and elec off when you leave for work in the morning.

nomoneytoday

Now that she's back at work it'll even out again. Is it really worth 4 months of arguing over?

ste_coxy

nomoneytoday wrote: »

Now that she's back at work it'll even out again. Is it really worth 4 months of arguing over?

there won't be arguing from my end, i think this is something I need to stand my ground over as there have been incidents before where I have let it lie, just to keep the peace so, yes I do think it is worth it. I'm a softouch but I'm not that much of a softouch

dorset_nurse

In my experience with my housemates its always worth talking about it before it winds you too much.
My housemate was being lazy and I left it too long to point out the specific thing that was bugging me- when I did bring it up it ended up being blown into an argument but he stopped doing it. After that we spoke about everything straight away to sort the issues out.
Sharing really is hell!!

fimonkey

Are you on a water meter then? Water bills, electricity and gas have all gone up incredibly over the past year purely due to price increases, not extra useage. Are you factoring these price increases into your arguement as you would certainly both be paying more than last year for example even uf useage stayed the same.

We have a similar problem with a housemate who likes to leave stuff on standby and have the heating on. We decided to just deal with it as she's a lovely housemate otherwise - but I am going to buy an energy monitor which will tell us how much we're using. They're about £30 from B&Q. I will place this in a prominent place and see if she gets the hint. .. Probably not an option for you now if your housemate is working again.

Homersimpson

PasturesNew wrote: »

And boys are made of slugs and snails.

If its got tits or wheels its going to be trouble;)

BitterAndTwisted

ste_coxy wrote: »

well I messaged her as we're both at work saying the following:

2b honest I don’t wanna be paying anymore than I already am especially when I’m barely in the flat. We should probably discuss this properly as I don't think it's fair.

she's replied with:

“well I had a look at changing providers and the plan we are on is still the cheapest, the d/d can go back to £30 once the debt is cleared. Can we not just use what is in the joint account and then put the extra to it? Don’t understand why the water has shot up guess it’s the cost of living?”

She’s clearly having a laugh here. The electric has a debt on it as more has been used (by her) than we’ve been paying in. Same with the water!

I was quite sympathetic to your situation until you chose to open up a discussion about this by text. This is not the sort of thing that's going to be settled amicably by doing that. What were you thinking?

I quite agree that your flatmate should be paying the majority of the shortfall but if you'd decided to text me about it in the first instance I'd be quite hostile about it. I think it's very rude and quite cowardly as well.

mirrorimage0

but texting is how a lot of people communicate these days bitterandtwisted just because you do not agree with it does not mean its wrong. if thats how they communicate with each other then its fine

J_i_m

One thing to understand is that, things are never going to be "fair" you need to be realistic. I doubt your flat mate asked to lose their job, that must have been a bitter pill to swallow, and hence I'd imagine she'd have been bringing in much less money as a result of that, that's simply being realistic. And if the house is being used more, then the utility is going to cost more.

And I'm sorry, but if someone can't bring in the money because they're unemployed then you're going to have to exercise a little bit of realistic common sense, after all you can't exactly expect them to go sit on a bench in the street all day, simply to keep your utility bills down. (I know you didn't say this, I'm just using it as a hypothetical example).

It's not nice that you'd have been paying higher bills and shouldering much of that burden yourself, but realistically, if one part of the household lost their income through little fault of their own, then that was always going to happen, it's about being realistic. You never know, the same could happen to you, and your flatmate could then end up shoring up your end of the deficit. Swings and round a bouts.

If it were a case of them doing nothing to get back into work, then you'd have a good enough motive to feel a bit hard done by. But since she's back in work that's not the case.

You just need to sit down and go through the figures sensibly together and be realistic.