Paying to little for Gas and Electrc

Lizbragg33

Hi All,


I bought a new build house in Dec 2016. The first bills I got for combined gas and Electric averaged around £80 a month but we were just on a standard tariff with British Gas so I compared and Sainsbury's energy came up as the best deal for our consumption.


In July I signed up for a fixed deal tariff and it suggested I pay a direct debit of £55 a month for both gas and electric. Seemed quite cheap but thought as it's a new house that'll be why.


First bill came in around October and was only for £80 for a quarter, bit surprised but thought as we had not been using any gas etc it would level out in Winter. Remained £200 in credit


Just got a new bill for Mid Sept up until the 5th of Jan and it says they need to lower our direct debit to £40 as we are not using what we did last year and are still £120 in credit. Total bill was £166 for 4 months.


I can't understand how as I had a lot of time off work in Nov and Dec and was in the house all day with the heating on. I was expecting a higher bill. I'm worried they are not billing me correctly, this just seems to be too low. We paid more in a one bed flat we use to own.


The house is a 3 storey 3 bed house, fairly big with 3 bathrooms. It does however have 2 heating systems so we can heat upstairs and downstairs separately. We have the downstairs heating on a lot more than the upstairs (2 floors). Probably only have upstairs heating on for about an hour a day and downstairs for about 6 hours a day, this is set at 23 degrees so is not on the whole time.


I'm going to take the meter readings tonight and compare them to what the bill says but is it possible for our bills to be so low?

Robin9

Lizbragg33 wrote: »

I'm going to take the meter readings tonight and compare them to what the bill says but is it possible for our bills to be so low?

Thats the important bit - do you read your meter at least every month. If not you will simply have lots of estimated readings.

Lizbragg33

Thanks for the reply. My meter was read beginning of Jan (according to my bill) and was not an estimate. I also have a smart reader.

matelodave

Try reading the meter yourself and checking your statements/bills actually reflect the meter readings and do your own sums to make sure that your DD is fully covering your consumption.

Dont forget that your consumption will increase by quite a bit at this time of the year and the computer systems that tweak your drect debit are quite often 3-6 months out. So it could go down now and then suddenly increase in April when you used 3-4 months of energy over the winter.

I used to be with Scottish Power and they'd try to bounce my direct debit up & down every three months based on my previous three months of consumption. Most people use around 60-70% of their energy between November and March and the rest in the seven summer months.

Personally I'd leave it as it is rather than dropping it and then review it yourself in April to see where you are otherwise you could end up being the same amount in arrears.