whats your average monthly cost for gas and electric??

raider

£37 month electric (4500kWh a year)
No Gas. About £58/month, (£700 a year) heating oil.
10 year old house, well insulated loft and walls.
4 bed detached.

shellsuit

HappyMJ, I've done it and just want to thank you so much!


I rang SP and got my annual usage, so I added that and my annual usage from BG and it said the DD would be £160 a month, which would be fantastic, seeing as we're paying £240 a month now!

Fingers crossed it all goes through OK! x

shellsuit

macman wrote: »

Are you heating your hot water from an immersion heater then? If so that is approx 3 times more expensive than using gas. A simple plug in timer will prevent you leaving it on longer than necessary. If it's left on all night then it's just cycling on and off and wasting power, since no hot water is being drawn off.

Immersion heater? No...I don't think so anyway.:o

We have a back boiler downstairs and a tank in my daughters room, that's all I know.

We have got the timer on now for the hot water/heating, for an hour in the morning and an hour early evening, so nowhere near me having the hot water on 24/7.

HappyMJ

shellsuit wrote: »

HappyMJ, I've done it and just want to thank you so much!


I rang SP and got my annual usage, so I added that and my annual usage from BG and it said the DD would be £160 a month, which would be fantastic, seeing as we're paying £240 a month now!

Fingers crossed it all goes through OK! x

Don't believe it...The savings are £600 a year so your direct debit should be no less than £190 per month. As the annual discount is deferred you need to pay an extra £10 a month making it £200 per month. Also in the first year you will be missing the first payment paying monthly in arrears. They want to pay up in advance which will add another £18 to the monthly payments to make it £218 until you are a month in advance. It's a trick they use. If you pay £160 per month they will in 6 months time just put it back up to £240 or more per month especially considering it's winter. You will save by theoretically missing the first payment and getting £105 back in 12 months time.

Anyway, you still have horrendous usage levels that need resolving. If it's not an immersion heater then what is it? Do you use a dryer a lot? Have an electric conservatory heater? How about reading the meter every week. Get an energy monitor and it'll give you an idea of what is using so much and what your base usage is.

oldskoo1

4 bed detached, 2 adults, 2 kills - house 14 years old. CH gas and on 24/7. Hot water gas timed.

Currently it's £66.90 p/m for gas and electric - that's about the right average for the year.


Summer
£20 gas give or take £5.
£20 elec

Winter
£45 - £65 Gas
£25 Elec

This month has been particularly warm so i've worked out i've used less than my payment this month, my first winter quarter month.

But £66 is a very decent yearly average, BG did actually get this right so it rarely fluctuates. I'm with co-op now.

shellsuit

HappyMJ wrote: »

Don't believe it...The savings are £600 a year so your direct debit should be no less than £190 per month. As the annual discount is deferred you need to pay an extra £10 a month making it £200 per month. Also in the first year you will be missing the first payment paying monthly in arrears. They want to pay up in advance which will add another £18 to the monthly payments to make it £218 until you are a month in advance. It's a trick they use. If you pay £160 per month they will in 6 months time just put it back up to £240 or more per month especially considering it's winter. You will save by theoretically missing the first payment and getting £105 back in 12 months time.

Anyway, you still have horrendous usage levels that need resolving. If it's not an immersion heater then what is it? Do you use a dryer a lot? Have an electric conservatory heater? How about reading the meter every week. Get an energy monitor and it'll give you an idea of what is using so much and what your base usage is.

Oh, you didn't mention that before

At first I put in what we are paying per month and it said £190 odd a month for the DD.

I changed it then to our annual usage and it knocked it down further to £160 a month.

So long as we pay less than £240 a month, surely that's OK?

We do have a dryer and use it around 8 times a week, for 60 minutes a time, but we don't have a conservatory heater.

Do you know how much energy monitors are and where is the best place to get one?





When we lived in the old house (18 months ago, same amount of people, same size house), we were on prepayment meters. We would pay £17 a week average elec. In the winter, we'd put around £30-£40 a week in the gas, BUT during the summer, £5 could last a fortnight.

I don't know where we are going wrong

jackieb

HappyMJ wrote: »

Don't believe it...The savings are £600 a year so your direct debit should be no less than £190 per month. As the annual discount is deferred you need to pay an extra £10 a month making it £200 per month. Also in the first year you will be missing the first payment paying monthly in arrears. They want to pay up in advance which will add another £18 to the monthly payments to make it £218 until you are a month in advance. It's a trick they use. If you pay £160 per month they will in 6 months time just put it back up to £240 or more per month especially considering it's winter. You will save by theoretically missing the first payment and getting £105 back in 12 months time.

Anyway, you still have horrendous usage levels that need resolving. If it's not an immersion heater then what is it? Do you use a dryer a lot? Have an electric conservatory heater? How about reading the meter every week. Get an energy monitor and it'll give you an idea of what is using so much and what your base usage is.

This always happened to me when I switched. Would start off with lower DD's but then it would soon change to much higher ones. That's why i'm now in credit by almost £600 for my gas and electric. I've stopped switching because it always mucks up the direct debits.

agostini

I am at my wits end with Eon. We moved into small thatched cottage October 2010. First bill was £345 (not bad with night storage heaters on economy 7) asked to pay by dd in future and they set the level at £100 per month. The meter was read by their staff every quarter and in early summer they said they were reducing the dd to £74 (great we thought) We didn't know how much we should be paying on electric bills as we had only lived in the property 7 months, so reckoned after a year in the house we would know what we were spending and how much to cut down or not. In August we received a bill saying we owed £1888. When I called them and asked how as they had been reading the meter every quarter, they said they had ignored the readings as they had not been in line with previous usage!!! They said I should have checked the bills but as they were reading the meter and had even reduced the dd I thought the bills were right. They have now said they want £304 per month for electric we use PLUS £300 per month to pay off the debt. I am arguing that they should have taken notice of the readings and advised us the meter readngs were not in line with previous usage and certainly they shouldn't have REDUCED the dd. Can't afford to pay them £600 per month. Have now asked for help from the Ombudsman. Has anyone else had a similar problem. I asked them to check the meter to make sure we were not paying for the whole village but they said the meter is working fine. I wrote to their customer services who said they would look into my complaint but the next correspondence I got from them just said we are increasing your dd from £74 per month to £604!!!!

HappyMJ

jackieb wrote: »

This always happened to me when I switched. Would start off with lower DD's but then it would soon change to much higher ones. That's why i'm now in credit by almost £600 for my gas and electric. I've stopped switching because it always mucks up the direct debits.

Did you end up on a reasonably competitive tariff?

The mucked up DD's are very annoying and I think having a different bank account in which you contribute a fixed monthly amount and let them take what they want from that account is maybe the best way to resolve it.

It does put a lot of people off switching as they get sick of the switching and getting mucked around and end up on awful standard tariffs. It's just something you have to get used to.

The SOL 24 tariff is great but it only runs till 3rd Feb 2013 then have to switch again to keep the best tariff on the market. It reverts to the Go Save S tariff....a tariff that hasn't been released yet but should be about the same as Go Save not a particularly competitive tariff.

jackieb

HappyMJ wrote: »

Did you end up on a reasonably competitive tariff?

The mucked up DD's are very annoying and I think having a different bank account in which you contribute a fixed monthly amount and let them take what they want from that account is maybe the best way to resolve it.

It does put a lot of people off switching as they get sick of the switching and getting mucked around and end up on awful standard tariffs. It's just something you have to get used to.

The SOL 24 tariff is great but it only runs till 3rd Feb 2013 then have to switch again to keep the best tariff on the market. It reverts to the Go Save S tariff....a tariff that hasn't been released yet but should be about the same as Go Save not a particularly competitive tariff.

I can't remember what tariff i'm on. I just remember Martin being on breakfast telly one morning telling us all to lock in our tarrffs - which I did. I can't remember when it ends. It probably has already.