First Utility want £280 a month more!!!!

christmas_carole

Please help,
Have just found an email from First Utility, Gas and Electricity supplier, saying I haven't been paying enough monthly, (I was paying £100 a month) and tomorrow they will be taking £380, an extra £280 a month for the next three months until I am up to date with my payments, I have phoned in my readings every month so as not to get in this position, I am beside myself with worry, I have not enough coming in to cover this extra amount going out and will definitely be in trouble with my bank,is there anything I can do????:eek:

DragonQ

How much are you in debit on the account?

christmas_carole

Hi, here is what the email says,
Based on your actual and forecasted usage over 12 months, and your current monthly payment, you will have underpaid by £840.00 by 17th July 2013. To keep your account on track your direct debit amount will be increased.

Pineapple88

I'll apologise in advance for all the quesions in my post! If you are able to answer them it would help us to adviser you better

How long has the debt accrued over? I have not had any dealings with First Utility but most suppliers will allow you to pay the debt back over twleve months if paying by directy debit or will at least allow you to pay it back over the same length of time that it took to accrued. Did First Utility tell you why it will have to be paid back over 3 months?

Do you know if the debt covers both gas and electricity or just one? What sort of heating do you have- gas or electric? How long have you lived in the property? If you were with another provider before First Utility, how much did you pay them?

Of the £380 do you know how much they expect to go towards your usage? If you have been with them for under a year they may be basing their annual consumption figures on the higher autumn/winter usage. Some suppliers will agreed to recalculate this if you are able to provide an actual reading from last summer (I have found that this depends on the supplier and also the customer adviser you get through to, some will agree to try and lower it whilst others will not).

What are your annual usage figures in kwh? If you put these into a price comparison website it will give you an idea of what you should be paying minus the debt and what other providers will charge you.

It may also help if we knew what size and type of property you live in. Its not a totally accurate way to give advice on usage but if you are living in a large five bed detached house we would expect you to use more than if you lived in a one bedroomed flat!

christmas_carole

Hi Pineapple,
Bear with me and I will try to explain, I changed to FU last summer from N Power, since then there has been a problem and at Christmas I got an email from FU saying I owed £1500for two months supply!!!!, it all stemmed from an incorrect reading on the electricity bill on change over, I have still emailed my readings in every month to them and even had to take a picture of my meter to prove i was giving the correct reading, this seemed to be sorted out around a month ago when I got an email saying that almost £700 had been credited to my account, now this.
The email is not clear about which bill is in dispute, gas or electric. I think it is electricity.
We live in a 3 bed semi, just the two of us, I am so fed up of this company, I'm at work tomorrow so not east to sort out.
Carole

christmas_carole

I have gas central heating, we have lived here two years and are not big users of gas or electricity, I would be willing to spread it out over a year if they would agree to that.

Pineapple88

Thanks for the information Christmas Carole. £380 pm is a high dd for a 3 bed semi to pay assuming 'average' usage. To get to the bottom of this I think FU need to provide you with an up to date bill showing meter readings, usage and debit amount. This should then show you whether this is a new issue or whether it is a continuation of the issue from last year and you will also be able to check if the reading they have used are correct.

I think you should also ask FU for your annual usage in KWH and put these into a comparison site to see what you are actally using. If you are unsure you can post a reading from around this time last year and an up to date reading on here and we can tell you your usage.

christmas_carole

Electricity Standing Charge pence per day 15.75

Unit Rate pence per KWh 10.288

Gas Standing charge per day 53.81

Unit Rate pence per Kwh 2.690

christmas_carole

Hello, just been looking back at emails from last July, my gas reading is 11601 and my electricity from 31/8/12 is 11801, the readings now are gas 14183 and electricity 27315.
Is that any help?

Pineapple88

Using those figures it brings your gas usage out at 39504 kwh per year. A price comparison site show that on FU standard tariff this is roughly £111 per month. Those figures are well within the 'normal' range but there is some room to bring the bill down if you want to be MSE about it!

The problem is with the electricity side of things. Based on those figures for electricity your annual consumtpion is 21050, or roughly £208 per month :eek: In properties with gas heating the electricity usage is usually the much lower figure and the 'average' figure would be 5000-10,000 kwh per year. Either you are using a huge amount of electricity and or one of the electricity readings is wrong.

First check your usage: the highest users of electricity are heating products- underfloor heating, leaving the immersion heater on for long periods, electric aga, jacuzzi? I have seen people with electic aga's pay £150 per month for the aga alone.

If its not down to usage then check the readings. Are you only reading the digits in white/before the decimal point? Is there a 0 in front of the first digits? Does your meter serial number match the one on the bill (it is not unknown for companies be unaware that a meter change has taken place and as a result the readings do not match). Is one of these readings the one which was causing the dispute last year?

keith1950

Hi, average electricity usage is around 3,500 kWh so you are using about 6 x average and your gas, while not as bad, is well over twice the average figure of 16,000 kWh.

Either your usage is totally out of control or you have some incorrect readings.

You say you phoned in readings every month so even if your initial figures were wrong you should have some indication of your month by month usage !

Did you keep a record of those monthly readings as they may help to ascertain how much you direct debit should be without taking any debt into account.