Very high elec bill in student house, advice please

Lady_K

Daughters in a Student house and they have just recieved an electric bill for £203.33 for 3 months. Both readings have been read now so thats the true cost.

They new it would be high but didnt think it would be that high. Its mainly down to 1 girl who is completely stupid with the gas and electric. She has also on top of everything else bought an electric heater for her room but didnt tell anyone. They have had arguments about the way she leaves the heating on all day and then goes out so its heating an empty house. They wake up sweltering in the night because shes put it on, they have yet to recieve the gas bill.

Its a 3 bedroomed terraced house and 1 student lives in the what was originally the lounge downstairs, so the house is not that big and £203.33 for 3 months sounds too much to me even taking into consideration that there are 4 students in there.

This girl cooks a full cooked breakfast and cooked dinner at lunchtime and again a cooked dinner in the evening plus a cooked supper. She also washes enough for a laundry as she has 3 men on the go and they all come over to sleep with her and most of the time either one of the bfs stay in her room all day when shes at uni.

Its just been made worse by her having this heater aswell now and the way shes been with the gas and elec she will almost certainly have been leaving it on when shes gone out so they are worried about the fire hazzard.

It says on the box 230v/50hz halogen heater. It might not run up that much elec an hour but as shes more than likely left it on its going to turn out expensive.

They are going to approach her about this bill and the heater and everything else and say that she should pay more for her part of the bill as its her thats using the most of it.

How much do you think is fair that she should pay extra?

My bill for a semi detached 3 bed house with 2 downstairs main rooms is £29 a month and I send in readings every 3 months so its right. It seems madness that thiers should be so much its equiv to £68 a month so thats more than double mine

Any advice appreciated

beeniemac

The heater will absolutely hammer the elec usage - anything that produces lots of heat generally does. I would make sure that this is removed straight away - if she refuses to do this, perhaps ask her to put it on a plug-in timer (these can be had for a couple of quid).

Get the central heating setup on a timer so that baths/showers etc must be taken at a partucular time otherwise its cold shower time! A bit Big Brother, but it will bring the bills down.

Students generally do use a lot of electricity due to every room having a pc/telly/stereo etc and if there is 4 of them it is only about £17 per month per person - not a huge amount really.

Lady_K

She will not remove the heater and she broke the boiler by constantly flicking the switch to full when it was set. She ignores all time settings just puts it on full even just before she goes out.

The shower is electric and she has one every morning and night plus others with her bfs in the middle of the night even.

She wont get a time switch she just isnt the kind of person she ignores what anyone else wants and goes ahread with anything she wants to do.

I'm very concerned about the safety because of her leaving things on and when she leaves her bfs in her room they just lounge around in bed and it only takes them to fall asleep and a cover get flicked onto it or something and thats it.

Roll on when 3 of them move out and leave her to it, if anyone sees the bills I doubt they will get anyone new to move in at all

Rosie75

If she won't stop consuming energy in that way, she ought at least to pay for it. Ask the other students to check with their parents what their monthly gas and electricity bills are. £30 for electric sounds about right for a house that size. Anything over and above that, she should pay for. Same with the gas.

MarkyMarkD

What basis of lease is this house on? Is it a joint tenancy between the landlord and all the residents, or are they each renting a room directly from the landlord?

If the latter, can they not get the landlord to kick her out for having other people living there?

beeniemac

If she is as much of an idiot as she sounds and the rest of them can see this, they should make life as hard for her as they can - then when she complains she might understand. As they are students, a few practical jokes wouldn't be out of place

But in all seriousness if they feel that it is a fire risk, perhaps contact the landlord and advise them of this? I'm quite sure the landlord won't be all too happy about electric heaters being left on when the property is empty.

morg_monster

This is probably quite sneaky and i don't know if it'd be even possible (let alone legal...), but if all other routes don't get anywhere, could your daughter change the name on the bills to this girls' name. Then when the bill comes, your daughter and the other tenants pay a reasonable amount (perhaps over counter in bank etc to avoid it having to be in her name) and then present original bill and receipts from their payments to the girl, telling her that since she has incurred most of the costs she is responsible for paying the rest.
Also means if she doesn't pay they wil go after her rather than all of them together, (but also if she's clever she will just ring them up and have it changed to someone elses name i guess)...
just a sneaky idea..

Lady_K

My daughters a student nurse and shes got all on, they do far more hours and shifts than other students do and she has a presentation tomorrow at uni so is really fed up that something else is going off again the night before.

I have wrote an email to the landlord asking if he can get the girl to give it to him for safekeeping until she moves out. There is absolutely no way she will be safe with it or turn it off when she goes out. She leaves the doors unlocked when she goes out along with the heating so thats not going to bother her in the slightest. She is the only person staying in that property next year, she was the only one that wasnt burgled out of all of them in the house and they have all had enough of her ways.

It just says on the tenancy 'shorthold tenancy agreement' they all had to sign it together and the rent is down as one lump sum.

The landlord has the power to evict her when the others leave in june/july but he has said she can stay now. I think if she thought she may lose her place there she might give the heater to him

I do think its expected that the bill should be more than mine at £29 a month but not that much its £68 a month for a mid terraced 3 bed. Its not just the heater though its all the cooking she does and the washing for her boyfriends aswell as herself and tumble drying

Her name is on the bill but the other 3 are listed aswell, each had a bill each to make it fair.

They approached her and she said she will pay £15 extra than anyone else but I think thats not enough it will make hardly any difference to what they are going to have to pay each. The bill before this one was £110 for about 7 they didnt realise it was for 7 weeks they thought it was for 3 months so that was high aswell

Also the bill before this one would have included extra electricity that she had a big party for with a dj and lights and alsorts. She said she was going to pay something extra for the elec for that but it never happened. A few weeks after that party which she had let in every tom !!!!!! and harry in, house was burgled every room except hers

tripled

In all fairness if she agrees to pay an extra £15 on top of the £50 each, that doesn't seem unreasonable - they will then be paying £45 and the one girl £65, nearly 50% extra.

seven-day-weekend

Don't forget that they will all do their washing at different times, and the cooking, there are four separate people in the house, it's not like a family house, so the bills will be higher.

My son and his two lodgers all use the cooker at different times to do their main meal, wheareas for a family the same size the cooker would be used once, for one family meal. So the cooker is used three times a day instead of once.

Their bills will be higher than youes even in a similar house.

Lady_K

The guy that was in there last year (hes still there) has still got the bills from last year for 4 people and they were much less. They have even swapped to ebico from british gas since then too so they were expecting it to be about the same seeing as ebicos prices are less even though theres been an increase elec costs it should have counteracted that and been about the same. This bill this time last year was £129 for the same 3 months compared to this £203.33 so its quite a jump.

If she pays £15 extra that will knock £5 each off the others bills and she now says she isnt paying anything towards the big party she had that weekend because that was from the previous bill so its yet to be seen if she will actually pay this extra £15. The 3 others went home that weekend because they knew the party was on, my daughter was on a hospital placement so couldnt stay there because shed be kept up all night.

I do agree its got to be higher for students but not that much. Even people with 4 kids and loads of washing would not have bills that high at £68 a month. I do my daughters washing when she comes home too and she stays here when shes on placements in this area and at her boyfriends when shes on placements there so shes at the house only if she has to be.

It feels worse because the girls been nothing but trouble bringing lots of people round everyday cooking for them aswell, thats why she leaves the doors unlocked when she goes out so they can come in. Its just been a nightmare and my daughter says its just completely ruined her year

They didnt know her before she moved in, the landlord found her. She had left from another house after causing huge problems there