southern electric - is this a high gas bill??

jolenejolene

Hi,

I have just received my quarterly gas bill from Southern electric for Jan-Mar. It is just under £200! The only gas we use is boiler and cooker hob. the only reason I noticed was because I pay by direct debit and my statement said that we are over £140 in debit. I have never seen us this much in debit before. We live in a 4 bedroomed house. The heating and water are on the morning for about 2.5 hours and in the evening from say 3.30pm-10pm (heating), water is on a couple of hours. On the weekend we have been having the heating on at times during the day as well. Do you think this bill is a lot? My direct debits have always been about £25-30 per month for gas, whichever company I have been with and this has always evened out over the year. this time it seems as though it is too much in debit?

Any thoughts please? Thanks

webbie

We are Southern Electric too and I queried my rise last year. I also rang yesterday - if you ask they can work out your average monthly useage over the last year. I have a large 4 bed house (with a couple of draughty areas) and ours is £60 pm - £224 for the last quarter.

Gas prices have gone up a lot over the last 12-18 months (?) and they confirmed my gas was correct.

Best to ring and check you are on the cheapest plan - if you are collecting airmiles etc. this is not the cheapest.

Ken68

Sounds right to me,JJ, 9hours heating per day for 4 beds.

notbritishgas

Hi jolene, I would love a gas bill for less than £200 for a winter quarter.
I have a 3 bed bungalow and am due a gas bill at the end of this week and expect it to be in the region of £265 (npower).Heating on more than yours though.
I would say your bill is correct, accept it!

Kimberley

Yikes!! Thats a lot to me, i'm on keymeter and i only pay £10 a week and sometimes it's less so for a quarter Jan-March i only pay around £120. I was going to switch to DD as i was told it's cheaper then a pre payment meter, but going by this thread it's not.

olly300

With a key meter you can keep an eye on what you use as you have to go and put credit on it.

With the other bill payment methods unless you log your units every day/week otherwise you have no idea of usage.

caveat_emptor

Check the meter reading on your bill with the actual reading to make sure they haven't overestimated your useage. You might be in debit now but should come out of debit in summer. £200/quarter doesn't sound unreasonable.

jolenejolene

Thank you for all your replies. I love MSE. Everyone is so helpful :beer: So it sounds right then. Hells bells! Oh well. I think I'll increase the dd a bit!! The meter reading is right! Thanks so much.

kat21

I personally would check into it, I recieved a high gas bill from southern electric, they seem to have a very odd way of working things out, infact I will go so far as to say its one of the most complicated bills I have ever come across, that said I did querie my bill and they say they send bills out automatically, and no it wasnt an estimate it was an actual reading but they still managed to get it wrong, my bill for three months was £109 after the challenge I was told sorry it should have been £65.
thats for a one bed flat I only use the gas in the evenings
kat21

lazarou_true

Mine was nearly £100 per month but that's due to arrears, their fault from when atlantic was taken over by them, they continued to take £40 per month electric but did not take anything for gas (despite numerous phone calls from myself). Consequently, I now have a years worth of charges (over £1000) plus my regular monthly amount. I have contacted them and they've knocked it down to £83 per month, which I still think is too much.