gas bill suddenly back dated how to pay it?

sc0ttie

My partner and I split up in March, we shared a private rented 2 bedroom house. I moved out into my own private rented flat in March and since then the gas supplier have informed my ex that they had been undercharging us and sent a revised bill for the past 12 months. This bill is £585 and as it was for gas used when I lived there I will have to pay half.
The problem is, in order for me to move, I borrowed £900 from the bank, for the deposit on my flat and the removal costs. In the past 2 months I have not been able to pay back more than £20 on that £900 because the cost of buying things I needed for the flat (basic things like cooking utensils, kitchenware etc) I have even had to scrap my car because I could not afford to fix it and it was becoming very old and worn.
The bill from the gas supplier states the bill should be paid within 14 days but obviously we cannot do that, my ex is also very broke as she now pays for a 2 bed house with her one wage. Do the gas company have to give us a payment plan? It seems awfully unfair fo them to spring this large bill on us in one go when it was not our fault.
Any advise on how to proceed with this?

Nada666

They don't have to but they will if you ask. Ask.

Whilst you both had other more important things on your minds you still have to pay attention to normal business - and a £600 shortfall would have been caught by even a cursory check of your bills. (Not that knowing about it would help paying it.)

KTF

Phone them up and speak to them about coming to some sort of arrangement over the payment to spread it over a longer term.

sc0ttie

I will, i suppose I am a bit worried by the fact that I could probably only afford £20 a month and my ex partner the same, so £40 a month would take about 14 months and if they turn that down I don't know what we will do, we don't want bailif visits/costs etc, we are trying to rebuild our lives and me I am trying to get out of debt already Just trying to establish what my rights were.

KTF

Is the revised bill they have sent based on an estimate or actual reading?

If its an estimate then give them an actual as the estimate may be out and/or at least you will then have a final bill from them with the correct amount.

sc0ttie

it is based upon an actual reading. I will call them tonight and just hope £40 a month is going to be ok.

wavelets

Something doesn't seem quite right here.

How much gas in kWh are they saying you used in the last 12 months?

How much in total have you already paid for gas in the last 12 months?

The reason I ask is our total combined gas & electric bill for the year barely comes to £600 (although admittedly we are quite low users)

The average annual consumption of gas in the home is 13500kWh per year, and that would probably cost less than £585 for the whole year if you had used a comparison site to find one of the better deals.

:huh:

sc0ttie

they say we used 15981kwh. We had gas central heating, and a gas cooker but i did most of the cooking in an electric fan oven, just used the gas stove mainly for frying and boiling. Our shower is electric. It was just 2 of us living there.
We are with ecotricity and i emailed them last night because whenever i try to phone after work they are closed. I have asked them to confirm the gas reading of the date we moved in and that if we do owe them money then we will need a payment plan. I will try to investigate this though as it seems a lot of gas!

2013yearofthehouse

sc0ttie wrote: »

they say we used 15981kwh. We had gas central heating, and a gas cooker but i did most of the cooking in an electric fan oven, just used the gas stove mainly for frying and boiling. Our shower is electric. It was just 2 of us living there.
We are with ecotricity and i emailed them last night because whenever i try to phone after work they are closed. I have asked them to confirm the gas reading of the date we moved in and that if we do owe them money then we will need a payment plan. I will try to investigate this though as it seems a lot of gas!

Unless you're prices are very high, it sounds like £585 could be the majority of the bill for 15981kwh - had you paid much towards the gas already?

It is quite a lot of gas, especially if you weren't using it much for hot water, mostly heating, but if the house is quite drafty/not very well insulated and you had the heating on a lot then it's not completely unrealistic.

If you didn't use the heating that much, then it would be worth checking that they haven't mixed up imperial and metric - check whether the meter says sq ft or sq m on it and then look at the bill to to see if they are using the same measurement in their calculations, if not then your usage could be around one third of 15981kwh. In addition to checking they have the correct actual beginning and end meter readings for the 12 months of the bill.