HEEUGE increase in energy useage and over double request for monthly payment

kiss15868

Hi there, i recieved a bill from my supplier saying they expected next years useage to be £3500!!! and wanted to increase my monthly DD. i rang them and questioned why my useage has jumped up rapidly, when the house is empty all day!!! i have been taking readings every day at the same time, which average an astonishing 26 - 32 day and 41 night!! all electric economy 7, a tiny house with 1 tv no dishwasher theonly BIG things would be larder fridge, washing machine n tumble drier, i have a meter test booked soon. this cannot possibly be correct surely!! £270 a month by my calculations at current meter useage levels. it spins faster than a carousel!! iv been reading all about people on 12 - 18 - and 20 units a day!! i wish!!!
can i add that i have lived here for 17 years!!!

amtrakuk

Does sound very odd... Unless you were in debt? Any changes in your lifestyle? Is once of your storage heaters over charging?

kiss15868

no changes... i was in credit, they reduced my monthly paymens and i even got a rebate. i have been on the phone to the supplier SSE several times and they have been very helpful so far, i have been going around putting heaters off and on over night, to see if there is a dramatic difference or one appears faulty and no... the weirdest thing is, when the house was totally empty this week, i used 10 units in the day, when there was nothing on..... suspect a meter fault or running fast?? i am honestly stumped. i have calculated that i will be £270 useage by calender month at the moment if the readings carry on the way they are.

kiss15868

can i add that its always readings, never esstimates..

i did a walk through on the phone with the energy supplier the other day, on every electric item in each room and how long they were on for. they reckon i would be around £84 to £110 a month, agreed!! as i was paying £115 DD.

is there anybody else all electric that can give me an idea of daily units used please. i have never really checked before as i have never had too!! iv always in all the years i have lived here been happy enough with the bills.

totally confuddled

virtualsphere

Hi there,

I would strongly suggest you get your meter checked. In December, we had a bill which stated that we owed our supplier £200, and that our average usage had increased from 12 units to 15 units a day. The supplier wanted to put our direct debit up from £49 a month to £100 a month based on our new usage and to clear the debt.

As we couldn't afford this, I paid off the difference and managed to get them to reduce the amount to £60. After checking the meter, though, I realised that in the 3 week period since the bill our average usage had increased to 18 units! As we weren't doing anything different, I purchased an electricity monitor to see whether any of our appliances were faulty, which proved to be a very good investment.

As soon as I started using the monitor, I realised that the readings didn't match our electricity meter. The monitor was suggesting we were using just over £1 per day based on our current rate, which made us suspicious that the fault may be with our meter. The supplier were very reluctant to get someone to check the meter, and we had to speak to several people before we were able to get through to a "meter support team", who wanted details of all our appliances and how often we used them.

After providing the details, they agreed to send someone out to check the meter for free, but did say that it is very unusual for the meter to be incorrect, and that our existing appliances could account for 15 - 18 units a day. The engineer who came out to check the meter said that he had been doing the job for 18 years and never come across a faulty meter before, but when he switched off the power my wife noticed that the LED on the meter was still flashing. He conceded that this was odd, and was planning on installing a test meter, but when he turned the power back on, our meter failed completely!

As a result, he installed a different meter, which we have been monitoring for the last 3 weeks. Our average usage is between 7 and 8 units, which matches the monitor - less than half the average of our previous meter, even when we were desperately switching everything off in despair to try and reduce our bill! The supplier will be taking a reading after one month to assess our usage, so we will be able to ask for a refund.

I posted a thread on here last night about this, because having checked our bills I have discovered that we are likely to have been overcharged ever since the faulty meter was first installed back in 2008. Thanks to the helpful folks on here, I have discovered that we are eligible to claim for a refund dating back for 6 years. In this period, our direct debits have increased from around £20 a month to £49, but until our December bill we have always attributed it to higher usage and price increases as we have had two children in the time and have been using our appliances more. I now wish I had queried it sooner!

So if anyone tries to convince you electricity meters are very rarely wrong, don't let it put you off! Invest in an electricity monitor if you're not sure. Good luck!

macman

OP, you don't actually say how the house is heated and hot watered? This accounts for 80% of your usage-forget TV's and fridges. The assumption with E7 is that you have NSH's and an immersion heater, is this correct? If so, has the immersion been left on 24/7?
How is your E7 switched-time clock on the meter, or radio-switched?
If the former, check to see if it's set to the right time.
What s wired to your E7 circuit-just the NSH's and immersion, or everything?

kiss15868

hi there

thansk for the replies. its night storage heaters yes, just 3 of them, two small in the bedrooms and a largere one in the livingroom. the water is emmersion heating on a timer through the night only for a cple of hours. Economy 7. iv lived here so long, i know exactly how the place shouls run and has been runnning. there are suden jumps in useage during the day when the house is empty..... and the useage is extremely high for hats in the house, the supplier agrees with that..... the meter check is on friday so fingers crosed we get a resolve.

Has anybody else here on all electric that can give me any idea of daily readings. 38 during the day is SURELY wrong. and 41 at night.....

many thanks