MERGED: Huge / crazy Utility Bills - Help & Advice

DNW_2

We've always had huge gas and electric bills but I'd always just grumbled to myself, paid them in full and not thought about it until the next bill turned up. But I really need to try and get to the bottom of why our bills are quite so high, and I guess figure out if they are high or whether that's just my perception of them.

We're currently paying Swalec £147 a month for gas and £129 for electric (although have had a refund for both in Dec), looking through previous bills we used 37,406 kwh gas and 8571 units elec over an entire year. It's a largish end of terrace victorian house and has 3 floors and high ceilings. Downstairs is always cold due to suspended floors but we're used to it now so don't put the heating on to try and warm it up above average (no timer, combi boiler heating, thermostat generally set on 15deg although we do turn it up a little for a couple of hours in the evening - but even then I have been known to sit watching tv in my coat!). Upstairs the radiators are on in 3 of the 4 bedrooms (all rads have TRVs fitted).

Cooking is generally maybe an hour fan oven per day. Hot water is all combi boiler (average 4 x showers between us per, day and around 10 loads of washing a week (teenage rugby playing kids!!). Washing was spun on fast spin and then went straight into the tumble drier over winter, line dried in spring/summer.

Do these bills seem high to anyone? Or are they perfectly normal?

andrewsaund

Hi, need a bit of advice what to do here...

Been merrily plodding along paying the £33 per month direct debit for electricity and £69 per month direct debit for gas for the last little while. (3/4 bed student house) On a tariff where direct debit can change based on higher/lower usage.

So imagine my horror that when we ask for final bills expecting them to be of similar amounts we get bills for about £240 for each utility.

What we don't understand is how it can be so high considering we've had a meter reading done about 3 months ago and one approx 6 months before that, and that we are paying monthly!

Advice please?

redpola

I'm coming to the conclusion that these companies are no better than thieves.

I just had a bill saying that my monthly direct debit of £117 might "not quite" cover my gas an elec usage, so it's being changed to £368!

As a result, I've just spent a couple of hours graphing my electricity and gas usage from THEIR ACTUAL READINGS and there is no discernible change in usage patterns over the last three years. The graphs are linear.

I also checked my payments to them for the last three years. Amazingly, these bear no relationship to the gas or electricity usage graphs, and even more amazingly, they reduced my monthly payment in September 2012 from £148/mth to £52/mth. Yes, they reduced my monthly payment to 1/3 of its previous value for no reason whatsoever!

This behaviour is absolutely ridiculous. If they insist I pay monthly and that they set the size of direct debit then they should be doing that responsibly.