Help required is it My landlord or my energy supplier at fault?

katiemc79

Hi there,

I am after some advise..shock!
I moved into an apartment on the 30th August 2010. I contacted my energy supllier to arrange a monthly direct debit so that I wouldnt get any nasty shocks every quater.

Background - I live in 2 bedroom apartment ( me and partner) both work during the day. I have an economy seven water heater and electric heaters ( not storage heaters) but generally only use these in v cold occasions at night for a couple of hours.

My first montly instalments is £49.00 but when my bills come they didnt cover the balance. I then started paying £89.00 a month and gave them an accurate reading in Sept 2011.

I have just rang to get my final bill as I am moving out and even though I have been paying £89.00 in sept,oct,nov,dec,jan,feb, march, april and may then are still trying to chanrge me £880.00. That means from September 2011 to now June 2012 my dlectricity bill will be £1688!! for 9 months! ouch.

Despite ringing up twice in 2011 for tariff advice.
Furthermore I have just found out that I have economy seven equipement in mine and all the apartments in the block. Yet they have not supplied us with economy seven meters just single reading meters.

Do you think I have any legs in A - disputing my bill and energy levels.
Putting part blame on the landlord / owner of the whole apartment block for suppling energy saving goods but the incorrect meter as if this was correct i could of saved myself a packet!
Meter reading sept 2011 = 24102
Meter reading june 2012 = 34495

penrhyn

You mean you have storage heaters (big box full of bricks)? If not on Economy 7 how are they timed to come on?

Or do you in fact have panel heaters that you turn on run when you need them?

You need to explain what you mean by Economy equipment.

katiemc79

Sorry in that case i do not have storage heaters just panel ones i turn off and on. I keep these off and just turn them on for a blast of heat on cold evenings and turn off before bed. My water heater is economy 7 though.
Hope that helps.

Katie

penrhyn

I which case Economy 7 would not save you any money, in fact you could end up having to pay more, as you would be paying a higher day rate on an economy 7 tariff.

Your best plan is to use the panel heaters with care, turn the thermostats down a bit, get a room thermometer and don't overheat the rooms.

Terrylw1

Its not the suppliers fault on a new build, its the developers. Unless the supplier has been made aware that they are single rate meters wired to E7 style heating, they wouldn't know so can't be responsible for misadvice or not taking any corrective action.
This would push it all back to the developer and landlord.

Before considering it though, you have to decide whether its actually wrong.

The way to check is to work out how much of your kwh per day comes from your usage in E7 style hours. These hours differ by meter and region but working to say, 12-7am, 11:30pm-6:30am, 1-8am, 12:30-7:30 being the more common times.

Bare in mind E7 off peak hours also cover all other appliances, lighting, etc during those hours.

Then deduct the night time you have calculated from the total use per day. Do it over a period such as a week to get some daily averages. Its not ideal with the weather as your usage will be higher on the heating through winter, hence we're into the lower usage periods now for E7.

Put that data into a comparison site and see if its cheaper than a one rate comparison. Don't look at the cheapest, see if E7 or single rate is always cheaper. Then you will know and can take private action against the developer & landlord if needed.

That's what you can try. From your posts though, you don't use much heating so its unlikely you will benefit from E7 since your total night rate usage needs to be somewhere around 24% of total usage (but this is a generic quick figure, the comparison site is the true way)

spiro

Following in from the post above, if you take BGs standard tariff as an example, standard rate (24/7) is 24.806p/kwh for 1st 720kwh/year (split quarterly) & then 11.453p/kwh, whereas E7 is 28.495p/kwh for 1st 720kwh/year (split quarterly) & then 15.142p/kwh during the day and 6.619p/kwh for the 7hrs night. As you can see the day rate is about 4p/kwh higher on E7 hence the need to use a fairly large percentage at night against daytime for E7 to be financially sensible.

The bottom line is that elec heating/hot water is expensive (about triple) compared to gas (8.775/kwh for 1st 2860kwh/year (split quarterly) & then 4.036p/kwh).

macman

No one is 'at fault'. Your landlord has either inherited or fitted the cheapest capital cost heating option for him, (but not for you) convectors being less than storage heaters running on E7. Your energy supplier neither knows nor cares what your heating arrangements are.
Ultimately it's down to you to verify the heating arrangements when you take on a lease, and change your tariff accordingly. As stated above, it's unlikely that an E7 tariff would result in any saving if only using it for DHW,-you generally need to use 20%+ on cheap rate to make it pay.

katiemc79

Thank you for your advice £1688 just seems a bit steep for 9 months of electricity! Luckily ive been paying instalements each month of £90 so its bridged the gap i owe by 50%! Last bit of advice how do you think id get on negotiating this bill down with the electricity supplier?

penrhyn

Sorry negotiating the bill down, on what possible grounds, you used the electricity?
10,000 Kwh over the 9 month period including the winter months seems about right to me. You might wish to go on a comparison site to see if there is a cheaper option.

Your problem is having the most expensive form of heating around, i.e elecrtric panel heaters.

katiemc79

Ok Thank you, these questions may seem really simple and obvious to you, but not to me. Hense asking for advise.
My grounds were that maybe a different plan would have decresed my bill. I have already been on the price comparrison websites and like for like it reduced my bill by £500. I just didnt know if they would only look at this going forward not in the past even though i have asked them twice to rework my monthly instalements and twice it has been 50% the cost of my bill. It just didnt seem like sound advice.

spiro

You choose the tariff you are on not your supplier and you are also partially limited in your case because you have a single rate meter. They will not look to see if there is a better tariff and recalculate your bill. Its like using all the Tesco Finest products instead of their Value range, basically the same but a big difference in price.

As already said the amount of elec is about right, you have a form of heating that is not vary good (panels) and they use the wrong fuel (elec not gas).

If you are renting I would be looking for somewhere with GSH.