Gas/Electricity help needed please!

thecollecter

Hi. I'm trying to sort my friends finances for him and they are quite a mess so I've got loads of questions in the coming days. So the aim is to get his outgoings as low as possible. He is a self employed teacher.

He is with SWALEC for electricity and British Gas for gas. He moved into a new property in August 2010. There was no central heating in the property. Because he gets WTC i applied for him to get a grant for central heating through Nest Wales and he got it so now his house is fully heated. That all went well. One of the conditions of the grant though was that he had to be with British Gas for a year for his gas. His firsst month bill was 149.00, but granted that may be because he had it on all the time at first!

Before that, he lived there through one winter with no heating apart from a couple of useless storage heaters. So he bought 2 small plug in heaters. His bills were massive last year for electricity. But now on his recent bill they said he was in credit by 488.00 which SWALEC say will be put towards future bills. But he is not rich. And last year he paid them about 15% of his take home pay. Just for electricity.

So I guess the first question is, can he get that money from SWALEC?

Also the whole set up with 2 companies is not great. But I don't think its a good idea for him to tie himself to British Gas for both ie BG sent him a letter recently saying he would get £35.00 if he switched to them for electricity too.

Any advice, insight much appreciated.

Oh for gas his tariff is economy 7

Thanks in advance!

Terrylw1

Its possible he can get it all back or some of it.

If at the end of his year, known as his final settlement quarter, providing his DD is enough o cover the periods ahead, they should refund it all. If the DD is not enough they can increases it and full refund or kept the DD at the current rate and refund less. They would normally want to make the DD accurate.

If its a mid year issue, you need to understand why he is to much in credit e.g. after factoring in seasonal changes is he paying more than he should and only adding to his credit each month. In this cases, get them to decrease it and refund it to him in part or all.

You should be ale to work this out from his yearly bill values, but beware seasonal weighting hence the supplier may need it. Also, ensure the bills are to firm reading not estimates. Before recalculation of DD and refunds, it has to be to firm reads even if they have to create a bill for you otherwise they could put your friend back in debt...hence they wouldn't allow it.

thecollecter

oh i see what you mean. i will get all his bills together and analyze them. Yes and now that he isn't relying on electricity only heat the house, the DD will be lower. Thanks for the advice!