Devastated by EDF Bill

Willem-de-Blois

A day after being given my notice by my employer, I received a shocking EDF bill.

I live in a shared, three bedroom flat which is metered. I moved in on April 2012. A bill book has survived the coming and going of several tenants so I can see what was paid before and during my tenancy.

Total EDF bills per year

2011 - £502.99
2012 - £711.49
2013 - £1091.65

2014 to March £797.59

In December 2012, we had a change in flatmates. At the end of this quarter March 2013's bill was £741.65. We could not understand how this had risen from £293.56 on March 2012. We thought our new flatmate might have had something to do with this but no-one can cause such an increase on his own.

Following this shock, we paid off this bill in three instalments. After this, EDF suggested that we paid £50 per month which it estimated was our monthly use. Between then and the most recent bill, we have made 8 instalments of £50.

I expected this latest bill to be another £50 one but I was shocked to see that it is (£1247.59 - £450) £797.59 !

I really cannot understand that despite paying £50/ month for the last 8 months, we still have a bill for 14 March 2013 to 17 February 2041 (341 days) which is higher than 2011 and 2012's annual charges.

Does £3.66/ day sound reasonable for a three bedroom flat with no gas supply?

This means that the cost is about £110 per 30 days, so where did EDF get this £50 monthly estimate from? This has given us a devastatingly false sense of security.

ChumpusRex

If you want better advice on managing your energy consumption, we need to know the following:
1. Do you have an E7 meter or a normal one?
2. What type of heating do you have, and how is it controlled? Do your flatmates know how to use it?
3. What type of hot water system do you have, and how is it controlled?
4. What is your current meter reading, and what have historical meter readings been? (Real readings, not estimates)

Willem-de-Blois

EDF should allow us to pay in three instalments given that we have been paying a false estimate for the past eight months.

ChumpusRex wrote: »

If you want better advice on managing your energy consumption, we need to know the following:
1. Do you have an E7 meter or a normal one?
2. What type of heating do you have, and how is it controlled? Do your flatmates know how to use it?
3. What type of hot water system do you have, and how is it controlled?
4. What is your current meter reading, and what have historical meter readings been? (Real readings, not estimates)

1. I am on EDF's standard (variable) - E7 tariff, the only bit of hardware that the term "Economy 7" appears is on the immersion heater's timer.

2. The electric heating in controlled by a timer and a thermostat. In practice, it is used for an hour in the mornings and a couple of hours in the evening. I set the thermostat to 21°C but I have noticed that others have had this at 23°C and above. The radiators each come with a Honeywell thermostat. I think they are water heated.

3. The water comes from an Economy 7 combi-boiler. No one has sought to control this since I moved in. It has a timer.

4. Real readings:

14 March 2013, day 20001
14 March 2013, night 10287

17 Feb 2014, day 25300
17 Feb 2014, night 13483

KTF

Haver you been giving them regular actual readings so they can calculate the monthly consumption/payment correctly?

scragend

When I was with EDF for electricity I was unable to give them a reading for the entire time I was with them.

They cocked up the process of moving from e-on and so my account never showed as fully active with them (although it was). I paid them every month but was never able to give a reading and never received a bill.

After 12 months I moved to British Gas. This finally triggered a bill (estimated) from EDF which was way lower than actual, but that reading was used to switch to BG. That meant that my first bill from BG was high (when I gave them an actual reading) but I caught up over the course of the first year just because they set high initial monthly payments.

So it doesn't surprise me that EDF have cocked up. Although maybe you should have been aware that £50 per month was too low. I knew I wasn't paying enough to them so I was expecting a hit at some stage.

mattcanary

Willem-de-Blois wrote: »

EDF should allow us to pay in three instalments given that we have been paying a false estimate for the past eight months.




1. I am on EDF's standard (variable) - E7 tariff, the only bit of hardware that the term "Economy 7" appears is on the immersion heater's timer.

2. The electric heating in controlled by a timer and a thermostat. In practice, it is used for an hour in the mornings and a couple of hours in the evening. I set the thermostat to 21°C but I have noticed that others have had this at 23°C and above. The radiators each come with a Honeywell thermostat. I think they are water heated.

3. The water comes from an Economy 7 combi-boiler. No one has sought to control this since I moved in. It has a timer.

4. Real readings:

14 March 2013, day 20001
14 March 2013, night 10287

17 Feb 2014, day 25300
17 Feb 2014, night 13483

It's rather weird that you are using more electric in the day than in the night, when you have electric storage heaters.

Have you check the time on your meter? Is it correct? If it isn;t, it will be switching to the cheap prices at the wrong time (ie: maybe when your electric heating is not on) and charging the higher unit prices when your heating is on.

The time on many dual-rate meters is wrong. There has been a lot of press about it in the last week. Being a former meter-reader, I know this has not been exaggerated by the press.

Willem-de-Blois

mattcanary wrote: »

It's rather weird that you are using more electric in the day than in the night, when you have electric storage heaters.

Have you check the time on your meter? Is it correct? If it isn;t, it will be switching to the cheap prices at the wrong time (ie: maybe when your electric heating is not on) and charging the higher unit prices when your heating is on.

The time on many dual-rate meters is wrong. There has been a lot of press about it in the last week. Being a former meter-reader, I know this has not been exaggerated by the press.

How do I know for sure that they are storage heaters? I don't have the bricks inside them. When the power is switched off, the radiators cool down quite quickly.

If they are not storage heaters, then I am at a loss as to why the tariff is on E7.

Willem-de-Blois

Is finding E7's percentage of total electricity use simply a case of comparing the night unit use with the day?

StuC75

Previous payments don't mean anything what-so-ever - its what the actual consumption in KwH has been over those years and whether all bills were based on actual readings or on estimates..

HereBeDragons_2

Willem-de-Blois wrote: »

1. I am on EDF's standard (variable) - E7 tariff, the only bit of hardware that the term "Economy 7" appears is on the immersion heater's timer.

2. The electric heating in controlled by a timer and a thermostat. In practice, it is used for an hour in the mornings and a couple of hours in the evening. I set the thermostat to 21°C but I have noticed that others have had this at 23°C and above. The radiators each come with a Honeywell thermostat. I think they are water heated.

3. The water comes from an Economy 7 combi-boiler. No one has sought to control this since I moved in. It has a timer.

4. Real readings:

14 March 2013, day 20001
14 March 2013, night 10287

17 Feb 2014, day 25300
17 Feb 2014, night 13483

I'm not sure you're clear about what kind of water heating system you have. At 1. you say it's an immersion heater, but at 3. you say it's an Economy 7 combi-boiler. The whole point of Economy 7 is that it uses cheaper overnight electricity to heat and store hot water in an immersion tank, for use during the day. A combi-boiler does not have a storage tank - it is on-demand and I can't imagine why you would have an electric combi-boiler at all, especially on E7.

There are several possibilities here: your electricity consumption is being billed accurately and is unfortunately way more than you were previously billed for, or you are using excessive daytime supply somewhere, or your meter is faulty or has incorrect timer settings. Whatever it is, you're only going to get to the bottom of it by getting a much more accurate picture of your energy usage than what you get from taking annual readings.

Presuming your hot water is an immersion heater, take a close look at its setup as well as your storage heaters to work out what is going on and whether they are using your expensive daytime electricity supply unnecessarily. Have you checked for obvious things like someone in flat put the hot water manual boost on and has left it on 24/7? That could certainly account for a sudden upsurge in electricity usage when your old flatmate moved in.

Most immersion water heaters have a daytime boost option whereby a small, separate tank of water is heated at pre-set times during the day as a 'top-up' to the main (and much larger) overnight tank. When you live with flatmates this is a necessity to give you extra hot water for when you come home in the evening and all start running the washing machine, taking showers/baths etc. This smaller tank gets heated when you use the manual boost switch, and is fed from the daytime supply. The large tank is heated overnight, from the separate overnight supply. It all depends on what model of immersion heater you have, but have you interrogated your immersion system timer settings and checked what is programmed? Is that timer accurate? Can you save a bit of money by altering the daytime settings? Ditto the storage heaters? Are you 100% sure they are storage heaters?

Get to the bottom of your electricity consumption by taking meter readings at regular intervals throughout the day, over the course of a couple of weeks. Do it last thing at night and first thing in the morning, and every couple of hours in between to track your overnight usage and daytime usage, and see where your household usage spikes. Try things like leaving your storage heating off one night so that only the hot water tank is running, and you'll get an accurate figure on how much overnight electricity each of those systems is using. Doing this will also help you ascertain whether your meter is functioning correctly - if it's not you might be recording daytime units instead of night-time ones when your hot water and heating are actually running overnight. There are many things that can go wrong and it's a matter of pinning the high daytime usage down device by device if necessary. Also check what time your night-time supply kicks in and switches off. It is usually somewhere between 11pm and 7am, depending on supplier.

That might all sound a bit tedious but I was able to work out and prove to EDF that my Economy 7 meter was faulty by doing detailed meter readings like this some years back - it turned out to be a faulty meter recording night-time usage as daytime and vice versa. As our night-time usage was a greater percentage (as it should be with E7) we were being seriously overbilled. To give them credit EDF replaced the meter quickly and recalculated my bills once a new pattern of energy usage was established, and I got a refund of several hundred pounds. I did have to push for it though, and without the accurate picture of my energy usage both before and after the meter change I would have had much less leverage with which to get the refund quickly.

Good luck!

Willem-de-Blois

Thanks, I will post regular meter readings and the time of the reading.

A new flat mate is moving in this evening so I will be taking a reading anyway.

I will try to find reasons as to why the day rate is so high given that all three flatmates are mostly out of the flat during the day and often during the weekend too.