New house with smart meter - expensive?

Jd843

Hi
I've just moved from a 3-bed detached house to a 2-bed terraced house (both rented). At my old house, we (a couple) were paying £63 a month for both gas and electricity. The current supplier at the new house is British gas, and the house has smart meters fitted. I've read that you can't really switch suppliers if you want to use the smart meter functionality (at least not without replacing the smart meters, which obviously we can't do as renters) so I got a quick quote from British gas. It came out as £77 a month. British gas seem to have particularly high standing charges and fairly average unit charges...

I'm not really sure what to do. I quite like the smart meters, but I don't want to get ripped off - I thought they were meant to save you money. Is it impossible to switch suppliers with the same smart meter? Could I potentially get a better deal with British gas if I spoke to them on the phone instead of getting an online quote?

Thanks in advance for replies.

Robin9

Forget what you paid at your previous property and forget about Smart meters.

Use a comparison site which gives you the option to describe your property, type of heating etc

Choose the best deal , without exit charges and initiate a swop with the new supplier.

Have you given BG the readings for you new property and also the readings to you old supplier for your old house ?

[Deleted User]

Hi,

the online quote is only an estimate, as BG don't know how much you are going to use.

Take regular readings, weekly/monthly and work out your usage.

You seem to have moved to a smaller house, so could be that you will use less.

trickytree1963

Smart meters won't save you money, only using less fuel and/or paying a cheaper tariff or Standing Charge will.

If you are OK taking reads from your meter don't worry about switching and losing some functions of the Smart Meter.

Work out your usage and put the figures into a comparison site

Jd843

[Deleted User] wrote:

Hi,

the online quote is only an estimate, as BG don't know how much you are going to use.

Take regular readings, weekly/monthly and work out your usage.

You seem to have moved to a smaller house, so could be that you will use less.

Yes I understand it is an estimate, but as I said in my previous post, the standing charge from British gas seems quite expensive (it's more expensive than the npower tariff we were on at the old house) and the unit prices are fairly average, so overall more expensive. And I did expect that we'd be paying less, as the house is much smaller.

Jd843

trickytree1963 wrote: »

Smart meters won't save you money, only using less fuel and/or paying a cheaper tariff or Standing Charge will.

If you are OK taking reads from your meter don't worry about switching and losing some functions of the Smart Meter.

Work out your usage and put the figures into a comparison site

The more I hear about these smart meters, the more pointless they appear. Are they just a ploy to force people to stick with the same energy supplier? Seems odd that there's such a drive to get people on them when they help so little (not hard to read a meter is it?) and restrict so much...

House_Martin

Jd843 wrote: »

The more I hear about these smart meters, the more pointless they appear. Are they just a ploy to force people to stick with the same energy supplier? Seems odd that there's such a drive to get people on them when they help so little (not hard to read a meter is it?) and restrict so much...

I m sure British Gas used that ploy in fitting smart meters.They have been installing smart meters for over 10 years and were the first supplier to install them. In my view behind their early decision to employ smarts was the idea that it would help to tie down consumers to them. Once people get to know how good they are as a fit and forget meter with extremely accurate billing 100% of the time, many people are loathe to switch once they have found out they are back to guestimates.
New meters are now available for fitting by BG which comply to SMETS2 in that they will be able to operate as smart with other suppliers once it comes on stream this year. From what I gather from a meter fitter I met they are still fitting the old SMETS1 meters until they run out of the old stock
Landis and Gyr smart meters which work in SMETS2 have been available for over a year and suppliers who use these meters should all be fitting them now.
British Gas in 2015/ 2016 were the cheapest supplier in the UK for me by a wide margin. OFGEM stopped white lable suppliers, like BGs Sainsburys Energy from offering cheaper tariffs then the parent company, a lousy decision and it virtually killed Sainsburys Energy off. Sainsburys also were offering top of the list tariffs in 2016 in my area until OFGEM ended it all and dragged them back to mid table/bottom in one stroke..Goodbye BG/Sainsburys for me.I am now suffering vague billing from Daligas and Robin Hood Energy who so far between them both have`nt had the decency to spend money on meter readers to come and open my two outside boxes and read the meters..no wonder meter fiddling is rife when they never show their faces from one year to the next.

Fred56

Smart meters don't save you money. It's a lie. You can save money by being careful and sensible about your energy use.
Smart meters are part of a ling term project to deter energy use conjured up by government and the energy industry. The primary aim is to introduce demand based charging. That means that you will pay more during hours of higher demand, like when you get home from work, want a shower etc. To do that the energy companies need smart meters and the smart meter progamme is the enabling work to introduce demand based charging.
Look into the experience of people in Ontario who suffer demand based charging.
It's about time someone with influence started kicking back at the government's campaign of lies about smart meters.
Incidently, I have had smart meters for both electric and gas. I had then installed in a new house I built in 2012 and I lived there for 3 years. They do not save any money, they just indicate how much you are using.It's up to you to adapt your behaviour. You can do that anyway by just thinking about things a bit more.
As for BG direct debits. BG is imfamous for fictional mathematics aimed at them hoarding your cash. Some years ago they wanted to collect £2300 per year from us when we were using £700 per year in gas. We had been with them for a full year and never been in debit. When challenged, they just lied and offered to collect just £1400 per year. We moved to another supplier.
Look at the energy performance of any home you plan to rent or buy. Get the best rated place you can. I have designed and built two A rated homes and I can assure you it works. A good energy rating means less heating demand but the rest stays the same, hot water, cooking, computers etc all use the same energy no matter the energy rating of the home. There is a bit of diminishing returns though. My last A rated house used about £360 a year for heating and hot water and most of that was hot water production. It follows that it is hardly worth paying more rent for an A rated versus a B rated home.

poppellerant

As renters, what gives you the impression that you can't have the smart meters swapped? What has it got to do with the landlord? As long as you're paying the rent and bills, I don't see why anybody should care.

Carrot007

poppellerant wrote: »

As renters, what gives you the impression that you can't have the smart meters swapped? What has it got to do with the landlord? As long as you're paying the rent and bills, I don't see why anybody should care.

Yes, this.

The meters are not the lanlord's property and he has no say in what happens with them. There might be a clause in your contract but that is usually about sticking with the meter payment type. eg not putting in prepay meters.

House_Martin

Carrot007 wrote: »

Yes, this.

The meters are not the lanlord's property and he has no say in what happens with them. There might be a clause in your contract but that is usually about sticking with the meter payment type. eg not putting in prepay meters.

If that clause is in the contract you can swap meters but would have to re install prepayment meters when you leave or the landlord could withhold the bond..The clause may well say you have to leave the property exactly as you found it..Could be the Landlord has had many problems with tenants clearing off leaving high bills unpaid in their wake..I know of tenants who will only take on a property if there are credit meters in place specifically so they can run up as much in debt as the supplier will take ,up to £2k before force fitting prepays.