Please Help! gas bill £2850

[Deleted User]

Bluebirdman_of_Alcathays wrote: »

The bills may have been going to the landlord for 3 years, and he ignored them. The energy provider can't intuit when people move into and out of properties.

Impossible to tell without further information, but there's every chance the OP has been naive, rather than negligent.

Yeh could be. In that case, I'd be straight on to the landlord to sort out the mess.

duchy

Is the bill addressed to you or to the occupier ?
Does your rental agreement mention utilities ?
Did you not think your bill was low for duel fuel -I know my gas bill is much more than my electric
Who set you up with EDF for your electric? You or your landlord?
These are the questions I'd want to have answers to before talking to Citizen's Advice about the best way to present your case and work out your next step. As you shouldn't have had a direct account with them and the billing structure is all wrong you need to know who set up that structure (and how they knew you are the tenant if the bill is addressed to you)

Lynds555

Hello everyone, thank you for the replies and advice, and I'll try and clarify the situation.

The landlord is a high street bank till it changed names about two years ago. The bank is only accessible by the main high street, and my flat is only accessible via the alleyway at the back. On top of the bank is my studio apartment, and there is another 2 bedroom flat above both owned by the bank. We both use the same front door and then have our own apartment doors just inside (flat A and . The door number for the bank is the same as ours but we have different postcodes. The upstairs flats doesn't have gas and is all electric.

I missed a comma out from the meter reading, so it actually says 744,516 m3. The 516 is surrounded by a red box. This meter is also accessible outside the flat downstairs, and is just covered with a white box. When I turn the heating on I only switch it on for 10 minutes then the place is warm for the next few hours. In the bathroom and kitchen sink when I turn the hot water tap on, the heater starts up and a few seconds later provides hot water, then when I switch the tap off the heater shuts down. My shower and cooker is electric.

I can assure you I was not being naive, but rather negligent thinking that EDF was supplying both my gas and electric. This is the first contact I have had in three years regarding the gas. The first letter I received from Corona was addressed to the occupier, I then contacted them and they have now updated the account with my name.

The new bill from Corona is broken down onto 7 pages, and the service charge was £2.00 originally and then increased to £2.70, the 5.5p per unit has remained the same. This excludes VAT at 5%. Unfortunately I'm at work so will have to wait till I get home for a full breakdown.

I'm going to contact Corona and will try and work out what the cost would have been if it was British Gas.

Thanks again for your help.

Kind Regards,

Lyndsay

Bluebirdman_of_Alcathays

Lynds555 wrote: »

I can assure you I was not being naive, but rather negligent thinking that EDF was supplying both my gas and electric. This is the first contact I have had in three years regarding the gas. The first letter I received from Corona was addressed to the occupier, I then contacted them and they have now updated the account with my name.

The new bill from Corona is broken down onto 7 pages, and the service charge was £2.00 originally and then increased to £2.70, the 5.5p per unit has remained the same. This excludes VAT at 5%. Unfortunately I'm at work so will have to wait till I get home for a full breakdown.

I'm going to contact Corona and will try and work out what the cost would have been if it was British Gas.

Thanks again for your help.

Kind Regards,

Lyndsay

??? Surely you would rather be naive than negligent?! Maybe a typo.

I'm hope for your sake Corona can reduce some of the charges, but they don't have to. The onus is on the new occupant to inform the incumbent energy supplier upon taking on the tenancy. Simply paying bills to another provider isn't enough. Trying to calculate what BG would charge is irrelevant, the supply is not with BG.

I believe you can apply to have the VAT reduced from 20% to 5%, which will reduce the bill somewhat.

Hopefully Corona will allow you to pay off the debt over a long period of time, and of course you need to get onto a residential tariff. Good luck.

Ryune

Lynds555 wrote: »

I missed a comma out from the meter reading, so it actually says 744,516 m3. The 516 is surrounded by a red box.

That works out at roughly 8,400 kWh which is £462 at 5.5ppkWh. The rate is unreasonable. The cost isn't too bad.

The majority of the cost is the fixed element. Business out of contract tariffs have to account for supplies of varying sizes being on them (since its a default rate) and so the fixed cost is high (since it has to potentially cover large meters which have high costs from the grid).

The advantage you have when negotiating with them is that as a business supplier they can do bespoke rates (so they could rebill you on whatever tariff they want to).


Domestic supplies on business tariffs are tricky and you're reliant to a degree on supplier good will (its not them who set this up, its whoever arranged the supply). When talking to them be very clear that its a domestic dwelling that the landlord seems to have put on a Business Tariff in error and that you believed in error you were paying EDF (big shock blah blah blah). Suggest that they either rebill you on a standard domestic rate or that they apply what you would have got had you taken a supply contract with them at the outset. They will be assuming you're a business and until they know otherwise will treat you as such.

One thing to bear in mind is that Corona can do no standing charge tariffs if they want. This would massivley reduce your bill and would be worth asking about.

Once done I would switch to an actual domestic supplier.

macman

OP, unless you confirm the date you moved in, and the date the s/c increased, no-one can tell you if the billing calc is correct or not.
Your meter reading is 744 (or 00744). Don't quote anything after the decimal point, as this causes confusion.
This won't help your current plight, but as such a low user, if you were to switch to Ebico Equigas (no standing charge), your annual cost on 2,800kWh pa would be just £71pa, or £6pm.
On such low usage, any tariff with an s/c is just throwing money away. In this case, about £80pm, given the absurdly high s/c.