180 quid bill for 3 months, is that good? Need Advice

kondormid

Whooa easy tigers.

If your bill is £220 and you pay £180 you will NOT owe them £40. Usually you would but because the rates are dropping by 5% or 6% over the comming months it is better to have the uncalculated unts shoved on to the next bill. The £40 you owe them magically becomes £38, throw in a bit of bank interest and who knows, you might have saved enough for a free pint on the energey company.

In my opinion, when the prices are going up you should generally never except an estimate, sure you might save a quid or two if they over charge you but it is much better to know where you are in a rising market.

Still it is worth getting a reading and posting them here, just so we can all see what is going on incase something is a miss. Why not get a reading for one day and a reading the next, just to give yourself a rough guide to what you are actually using.

isaac12345

macman wrote: »

In which case, your whole question is flawed. Look at the bill and meter, if it's estimated readings, submit actuals and get rebilled.
What we need are the actual total consumption figures in kWh for the billing period-not daily figures. In other words, the totals that you have been billed on.
Forget laptops and TV's-what costs is heating and hot water.

But what if its more than the estimate? I'll end up paying more.

kondormid

isaac12345, I was going to ask if this was your first house, and then I re-read your post and saw that it is your first time paying energy bills.

Look, energy bills can get out of hand very quickly indeed. Imagine a really bad loan shark, one that makes it really easy for you to get into debt by lying to you about how much you owe and once you get into trouble he slaps you with even higher bills in the form of pre-payment with re-payment tariffs that are much higher than the average person pays (yes we all thnk it is wrong too, but it is what they do). So, forget what I said earler, that was for people who do not expect the debt to dissapear and understand that in a few weeks or so someone will be along to read the meter anyway. I am sorry, I should have paid more attention to your post especially to the part about you never paying energy bills before.

Get a reading, phone them up, tell them the reading. They will probably gve you a total figure. Ask them if you are on the cheapest tariff, if not ask them to switch you and tell them that you wish to go on a monthly direct debit scheme and you want your debt added to it so you can repay it over the next 12 months. Doing it this way you might find that you have not got to pay £180 now. Either way it is still better for all involved if you spread this cost on a monthly basis. They like it and will give you a discount for going direct debit and you like it as you know where you are.

Well done on posting your questions, I have a strange feeling that if you had not then you may have gotten into some serious debt and believe me that is not nice. You might have saved yourself a fair wedge of cash here and also prevented a lot of future problems. Please let me know how you get on. Do not ignore this problem, it will not go away.

macman

isaac12345 wrote: »

But what if its more than the estimate? I'll end up paying more.

Yes, but if you don't you'll end up with a much bigger bill at the end as the arrears mount up-especially with winter bills to come! Get a handle on your actual consumption and then you'll know what your monthly amount will be.
If you make the effort to read your meters then you'll know if the estimates are over or under.

Le73Uq86Uv

Sign up to your EDF online account and generate a bill every month from the actual meter readings.

Then share the cost 5 ways.

Register for MyAccount

Swipe

isaac12345 wrote: »

But what if its more than the estimate? I'll end up paying more.

With your head in the sand, it looks like a disaster waiting to happen. Either pay what you owe now or let it spiral out of control and get a final bill for a large amount when you are up to your eyeballs with student debt at the end of your course. And who knows, one of your flatmates my leave early, good luck with chasing them for what they owe then.

isaac12345

Ok. Thanks for all of your advice! I'll call them up.
Also, I was having a look at switching the provider. Is it possible to switch right now or would I have to pay off everything first?

macman

You can't switch unless you clear the debt, anything over a certain level the current supplier will block the switch.

chanz4

it must of been outstanding for 28 days for them to object