E-on: £7656 annual bill. £638 a month. 6x national average!!! Help! Details inside...

Shadypops

Hey guys. So here's the story...

My girlfriend lives in an student house.
-6 tenants
-bad insulation
-single glazing
-old house

They pay £75 a week each, for single room rent. This is supposed to include bills.

The landlord calls in on them, says the bills are too high, and that he wants them to pay more in rent to cover the increase.

He brings with him, a letter from e-on, which states that after an annual review, they have decided to increase the monthly direct debit to £638 from £498. To cover the amount of electricity and gas they expect the house to use before the next annual review.

Even though the house is old, badly insulated, and with single glazing, my immediate reaction was that this was absurdly high. Especially, because I know that they take reasonable care of their energy use, and their house is always cold because they don't put the heating on often!! (Believe me, they don't!)

I mean, at £498 a month, it works out at £5,976 a year!

£638 x 12 = £7,656!!!!

You will realise immediately, based on your own household energy bills, that this is extremely high. Well, I looked into it further...

A recent study by uswitch, stated that the average UK energy bill was around £1252. Another stated £1390.

This means that their energy usage is, supposedly, more than 6x the national average!!!

What's worse, the increase is crazy! An £140 monthly increase!!! That's over 30% plus increase!!! The original price was already absurd, the new price is ridiculous!!!

I thought the landlord was trying to rip them off, to try to get them to pay more, whilst showing them the total energy costs for all of his other houses. Yet, the letter was addressed to his home, but the content specifically refers to the actual property in question.

So, we have took a meter reading, and will take another reading tomorrow, and in a week, to try to calculate the energy used from readings, based on normal energy usage.

But something is definitely wrong here. They simply could not, and with certainty, do not, use that much energy.

Either the landlord is ripping us off, or e-on is ripping the landlord off/ (has been ripping the landlord off for years with gradual annual price rises).

Please offer any ideas/suggestions/advice etc...

WestonDave

Obvious first thing to check is whether the gas is being calculated correctly for the type of meter - there are cuft (cubic feet) meters and metric meters, and getting them confused can multiply the bill by 3!

It would be helpful to know what the split between gas and electricity is in that figure - gas is fairly hard to get wrong other than the above because no-one with any sense goes tapping into gas supplies. On the other hand hidden heaters in rooms, immersion heaters left on, electric showers for half an hour at a time can run up lots of electricity usage which is expensive.

sdavies13

Another thought, are you sure the letter is genuine?

It is so easy to knock up fake letters on a computer these days.

Cardew

Sounds like someone is cultivating a lot of cannabis plants, and not bypassing the meter - as that would be illegal!

dogshome

Even assuming Eons letter is genuine, it's absolutely useless because Supplier forecasts of future Energy consumption cannot be relied on

To get handle on the Power & Gas costs in this student house, you need to see the Original bills covering at least the last 12 months - As you are paying the Bills you have the right to see these, and by the way your L/lord is not allowed
to add a 'profit' to the bills.

I guess you are in student accomodation that you found from a list provided by the college - If the L/lord doesn't want to give you acces to the bills, the threat of reporting the matter back to the college may change his mind.

When you get the bills, check the following:
The meter Nos. on the bills match those on the actual meter
The name of the tariff - If it says 'Standard' it will the dearest one Eon have.
Check the Gas meter for one of two markings - either ft3 for an Imperial model or m3 for Metric
.......On a Gas bill divide the meter units used into the Kwh charged - If the answer is appx 11.2 you are being charged for a Metric meter - If it's appx 31.5 you are being charged for an Imperial meter
If the meters mark does not match the billing, the L/lord must report this to Eon immediately

Total up the individual annual consumtions of Gas & Elec, and report them back here.

macman

You mention gas and electrcity, but nowhere do you say how the house is heated and hot watered? Is it gas CH and DHW? Or are the students using supplementary electric heating in their own rooms? This is what burns kWh.
What you need is to find out the actual annual consumption on both accounts and take it from there.
Personally I'd suggest that the rent is reduced, and the tenants manage their own bills in future. That way they'll pay for what they actually use, high or low.
Unfortunately people who don't pay directly for their fuel but have an 'all you can eat' arranagement are inevitably profligate with their usage.

Neil49

How long have they been living there? If they only moved in at the start of term (end of September) then it could be that the previous occupants used a lot of power (and underpaid the landlord for what they used) and it's only now that that he has been landed with a big bill and the power company have adjusted their monthly charge to compensate.

Did they take meter readings when they moved in? If so then it should be easy to get a rough idea of how much has been used and the cost of that usage.

Wywth

Shadypops wrote: »

Hey guys. So here's the story...

My girlfriend lives in an student house.
-6 tenants
-bad insulation
-single glazing
-old house

They pay £75 a week each, for single room rent. This is supposed to include bills.

The landlord calls in on them, says the bills are too high, and that he wants them to pay more in rent to cover the increase.

He brings with him, a letter from e-on, which states that after an annual review, they have decided to increase the monthly direct debit to £638 from £498. To cover the amount of electricity and gas they expect the house to use before the next annual review.

Even though the house is old, badly insulated, and with single glazing, my immediate reaction was that this was absurdly high. Especially, because I know that they take reasonable care of their energy use, and their house is always cold because they don't put the heating on often!! (Believe me, they don't!)

I mean, at £498 a month, it works out at £5,976 a year!

£638 x 12 = £7,656!!!!

You will realise immediately, based on your own household energy bills, that this is extremely high. Well, I looked into it further...

A recent study by uswitch, stated that the average UK energy bill was around £1252. Another stated £1390.

This means that their energy usage is, supposedly, more than 6x the national average!!!

What's worse, the increase is crazy! An £140 monthly increase!!! That's over 30% plus increase!!! The original price was already absurd, the new price is ridiculous!!!

I thought the landlord was trying to rip them off, to try to get them to pay more, whilst showing them the total energy costs for all of his other houses. Yet, the letter was addressed to his home, but the content specifically refers to the actual property in question.

So, we have took a meter reading, and will take another reading tomorrow, and in a week, to try to calculate the energy used from readings, based on normal energy usage.

But something is definitely wrong here. They simply could not, and with certainty, do not, use that much energy.

Either the landlord is ripping us off, or e-on is ripping the landlord off/ (has been ripping the landlord off for years with gradual annual price rises).

Please offer any ideas/suggestions/advice etc...

Most student accomodation is let for a minimum of 12 months (for obvious reasons)

If your gf has a TA that includes bills, the LL can't change it mid tenancy.

She should speak with her housing officer at her educational institution if the LL continues to cause her any distress

macman

Neil49 wrote: »

How long have they been living there? If they only moved in at the start of term (end of September) then it could be that the previous occupants used a lot of power (and underpaid the landlord for what they used) and it's only now that that he has been landed with a big bill and the power company have adjusted their monthly charge to compensate.

Did they take meter readings when they moved in? If so then it should be easy to get a rough idea of how much has been used and the cost of that usage.

I bet they won't have, because they thought it was all included at a fixed price.
What does the tenancy agreement say about the fuel bill component-the LL can't just increase it mid-term surely?

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena

Hi Shadypops,

I wanted to pop on to try and help, but I don't think I can add anything further to what dogshome has already said.

It does sound like the bills are in the land lords name and being sent to his address, so this becomes a third party dispute.

However, I do agree that the only way to establish that you are only paying for the energy that you use is to check the readings from the date that you moved in and take up to date readings and regular readings thereafter.

Has anyone been taking regular readings or are these billed based on estimates?

Helena

Shadypops

Hey, thanks for the replys. So we have readings after a week, and they seem crazy?

Elec: 3,647 kwh !!!

Gas: (meter difference of 142.195) m3 = 1,616 kwh (according to online converter)

An energy calculator put that at over £23,000 a year.

What the frick?