gas usage

JoJethwa

I have just had a crazy gas bill from Npower saying I use 33361kw hours of gas a year, that's 91 per day. The cost of this is £1099! We live in a 3 bed house (only 2 of us), use a combi boiler, don't use the heating too much and only have gas hob (oven electric). When I questioned this with Npower, they said it was high usage but it was what it was!

I think this is way too much for what we use, unless we have some sort of leak! What is the average gas usage? My friends pay around half of what we do, and from looking on other site, average daily usage was anywhere between 7 and 30 kw hours!

Any ideas why our bill is so big?

Thanks

gordon2

Metric or imperial meter?

Actual readings or estimates?

jalexa

JoJethwa wrote: »

Any ideas why our bill is so big?

That's twice average use. You can discount a leak as you would be dead.


You need to look closely at the meter readings. Post the readings from your last 2 bills, noting carefully whether the readings are marked as actual, customer or estimated.

Also post the current reading from your meter. That will answer one of the questions which has been asked.

macman

You also don't say what tariff you are on?
If your friends are paying half then that is because their consumption is much lower, and also because they may be on a cheaper tariff.

dogshome

Hi JoJethwa - Your figures point to n'power not knowing which type of meter you have - Look at your gas meter.

On the front it will be marked either m3 for a METRIC meter which delivers appx 11.2 Kwh for each meter unit -
Or ft3 for an IMPERIAL meter which delivers appx. 31.5 Kwh for each meter unit

Look at the bill and on the line which states how many meter units were used and then converts these to Kwh for chargeing, divide the Kwh into the Meter units.

The chances are that your meter is Metric, but n'power are chargeing it as Imperial:
If this is the case photo the front of your meter and send it to n'power with a letter of Complaint
Also
Look at all previous Gas bills and check them for this Metric/Imperial error

JoJethwa

Thanks for all the advice, really helpful. I called nPower armed with all this and they have agreed that it is double what it should be and have set it straight!

I will definatly keep a closer eye on this from now on!

Thanks again!
Jo

macman

So please enlighten us-what was the error? A metric/imperial mismatch would not halve your bill, it would divide it by about 3.

dogshome

Hi JoJethwa - Glad you got a good result and hope you are still following this thread, but, as macman has pointed out, correcting a Metric/Imperial billing error lowers the bill by a lot more than half.

With a Metric meter, to get a very close figure of what the bill should have been when it's been charged as an Imperial meter, divide the total cost by 31.5 and then multiply by 11.2:

ie A bill wrongly billed as Imperial when it should be Metric that has total cost of £200, when corrected would ony cost appx. £71 - This is not half, it's a reduction of 181% !!
CHECK THIS BILL AND ALL THE PREVIOUS ONE'S including those from a previous supplier if you have Switched.

elektra

Just to add to the great advice above -

when you look at your bills it should show the calculation on there somewhere

macman

Have you had a meter change in the last few years? If so, I'd check all your bills back to that date, as the new meter will have been metric, and the old possibly imperial.