Southern Electric DD increased by £60 a month

doodlesmum

I changed suppliers from Npower to Southern Electric arosund May time last year,it was i was at home following major surgery and i had salesman from Southern Electric knock on the door do all the figures and say yeap we can save you money so great i thought anything that saves bit money while i am on sick leave from work is great.My husband was"nt that came when he came home from work but we changed .
The DD were set at £128 a month,we have 3 bedroom house,2 rooms and kitchen downstairs.I have given a reading from our meter online just before Christmas as they requested.We both work full time,our heating is the big calor bottles and coal fire.My son has a bearded dragon in a vivarium and a small tropical fish tank and then the normal utility and if it gets cold but not cold enough to light fire or put heating on we have small hallogen heater 1400ww.
When the salesman worked out our usage last year it was based on used the stand alone electric heaters as we had not changed from oil to gas heating then, immersion heater is switched off.

I am puzzled why after having our meter read our DD has shot up now they want £183 pm ,i have 1 missed DD all year the rest paid on time,they said that they estimate our usage will be higher so our present DD wont cover a future bill .A thing that has got me wondering is that our meter was installed in 1993 just before we brought the the house by Manweb who were brought by Scottish Electric so it is 19 yrs old and i am starting to wonder if it is still running as it should if that makes sense ,i have just googled it and it states they should be changed after a set period of time.The saleman said that it was a very old meter but i heard nothing more when we swapped so thought no more about it .

The meter is one of those that has a dial that spins round,so i have tried various things such as the hallogen to see what makes it spin faster but i couldnt see any difference.I honestly thought that now we dont have immersion on and the gas heating so tumble dryer is used now infrequently compared to last year our bill would be lower so i am thinking is it me that has got it wrong or it is it possible our meter is running wrong.All my friends were shocked no one else i have asked has got DD"s anywhere near as high even one my friends who is on mat leave so is home all day with things on.

Thanks for reading ,any thoughts would be great,i will contact Southern Electric but i know there are some knowledge people on here so i thought if i could pick some brains first that would be great .

jalexa

doodlesmum wrote: »

I am puzzled why after having our meter read our DD has shot up now they want £183 pm ,i have 1 missed DD all year the rest paid on time,they said that they estimate our usage will be higher so our present DD wont cover a future bill

On the face of it, it seems quite a big monthly payment if heating is by other means but to get meaningful help you need to post usage and meter readings, not £££s/month.

Also get a handle on your consumption by taking daily readings for a week.

victor2

It's unlikely that your meter has a fault, but you can do a few simple checks to establish if it is working something like normal...
Switch everything off, preferably at the distribution panel or main fuse box. Your meter should stop.
Switch the circuits back on, but leave appliances etc. off. The meter may start to turn - that will be your "background" use. A fridge can be a fairly significant user, but it isn't constant, as it is controlled by a thermostat.
If the fridge is on, switch it off and check your meter. Assuming it is almost stationary, run an appliance with a known rating, such as a heater. Your meter should then spin a bit faster. Time a few revolutions of the meter. It will probably say on it how many revolutions equal 1 kWh (mine says 200). With a bit of simple arithmetic, you can then work out how many kWh the meter would record in one hour, which should correspond to the rating of the heater.
Hopefully, that will confirm that your meter does not have a problem and you can then concentrate on identifying your big users of electricity.

Don't forget to switch the fridge back on!

doodlesmum

Thanks appreciate the replies.I will get up my bill online and compare it aswell as trying the shutting everything off idea.Will get it all together and post the usage and meter readings.

penrhyn

Its fairly pointless talking in monetary terms, what you should do it take daily readings of your electric meter to check your consumption.
Are any of your bills estimated, are you catching up with a large debit on the account?

NittyGritty

sounds as tho your direct debits are not enough to cover your current usage, are you in debt with your current bill if so by how much, as that will prob explain a hike in costs with direct debit, if your in credit then you simply ring them and tell them i want my direct debit to stay the same.

Southern_Electric_company_representative

Hello, there may be other tariffs more suitable that would help you save money. If you would like to email me your account details to the email address provided on our profile page and I can look into this further. I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks

Stef

doodlesmum

Have sent you an email ,thankyou.