help - Do I change suppliers?

batches66

Hi I do hope someone can help me - I have been with EDF for 4 years since I moved into my present home. Our bills just seem to be getting bigger and bigger. My Husband & I live in a 3 bedroom semi detached house with my son just recently coming back home to to live as he has been living with his Dad for 1 1/2 years.
I am on EDF Tariff: Blue+Price Freeze November 2016 and I am paying the following month Direct Debit:

GAS - £50 (they have just raised it from £40 a month)
ELECTRICITY - £150 a month (they wanted to put it to £180)!!!

The annual statements have just come in stating usage:
GAS - 14,325 kwh (period - 15/1/2014-14/1/2015 (annual cost £704.08)
ELECTRICITY - 7617 kwh (period - 6/11/2014-5/11/2015) Annual cost £1192.93)

I have just looked at my accounts and I am owing about 0.25p (debit) at present on my gas and the electricity is £417.16 in credit considering I have just had to argue with them to stop it from being £180 a month from £140. I mananged to have it £150.

I am finding it harder and harder to pay this monthly and wondered if someone could help me find a cheaper or better supplier to change to.

Many thanks for anyones suggestes or ideas. I was looking into Utility Warehouse as believe I can pay them each month for what I use.

Cheers

matelodave

That's a lot of electricity especially if you've got gas central heating & hot water. The gas consumption is about on par with the national average but your electricity consumption is over twice what most people would use. (we don't use that and we are all electric)

My suggestion would be to monitor your meter daily for several weeks to find out where it's all going.

Have you got electric showers, heaters, an immersion heater, dishwasher, washing machine, tumble dryer etc.

These are the things that use most of it but leaving lights on, especially halogen downlighters can also put a dent in your bills. Try turning stuff off at the wall when it's not in use so it's not sitting on standby all the time and that includes TVs, computers, games consoles etc.

Try taking shorter showers or fewer of them especially if you've got electric shower units, only use the appliances with full loads and make sure your immersion heater is switched off if you can heat your water with gas.

It shouldn't be hard to identify more than £100 in savings without too much effort.
It might also be worth seeing if you can swap to a cheaper EDF tariff, especially as they've just reduced their prices a bit and if you can swap without incurring any penalty charges. Check what you are actually paying per kwh or both gas and leccy and what the standing charges are and use a comparison site to see if there's anything cheaper - don't look at the headline savings compare the price per kwh and daily charge.

Looking at your bills £704 a year for gas equates to nearly £59 a month and £1192 a year for leccy is £100 a month so you should be paying approximately £160 a month for both assuming that you don't have any arrears to pay off. Are your bills based on actual readings or are they estimated. Be a bit wary of any credits especially if your bills are estimated. You do need to check them very carefully and work back to actual readings to make sure that they are correct.

Consumerist

If you divide your annual cost of each fuel by twelve, that should give you a guide to what your monthly DD should be. If your account balance is in debit or credit then the DD would be adjusted to allow for that. It's not clear whether your costs include VAT (5%) but the VAT should be included in the annual costs.

I agree with matelotdave, above, that your electricity usage is quite high and think you should investigate where it is going, as he suggested.

solarpvman

am happy with FirstUtility...they seem cheap and come up consistently very well in the MSE comparison. I would join that scheme (on this site). My bills have been falling for the last several months or so.


Take a monthly reading and keep a note of it all and track your usage over time. It takes 100 seconds per month to do.


You CAN'T compare your BILL IN MONEY TERMS because the unit prices change. You should ONLY compare your consumption (in terms of units). Then all you have to do is keep on a reasonably cheap tariff. To do that you need an accurate record of your consumption.




If you heat water of ANY kind it's cheapest by far to use gas - providing you heat the amount you are going to use.


fit the new LED light to your most lived-in areas. Expensive but will last a long time and give a good colour.


plenty of other threads telling you to wear more jumpers and get insulation on the house. good luck !

SoletraderSteve

The November deal may have seemed right at the time of purchase giving what was going on with prices, but I would change to either the Blue+Price Promise May 2016 (cheapest) and also consider the Blue+Fixed Price January 2017 depending on how it compares. You can check out the unit costs at www.edfenergy.com/til and also check your current tariff that way too. Compare using MyAccount if you have registered on the website and if not call 0800 096 9000.