Shocked by our outstanding bill

Emam198

My partner and I are fairly new to looking after all bills, having moved in together a year ago, previously having lived with family. So I don't know how much of this is down to naivety, or if we are being charged too much. My OH was 'in charge' of monitoring the energy bills, but I've recently taken a look. He didn't understand that the account was in debit, not credit, to the amount of £1300

We're on a dual fuel supply with Avro energy. Fixed payment per month ofn£64. Standing charge around £11 per month. Tariff is 12.5p per kWh for electric, 2.7p per kWh for gas. The stinger is how much we have apparently used. Around 12.5 kWh for the year on electric and 13.5 kWh. I'm clearly no expert, but this seems over-the-top high to me, particularly on the electricity side. Google estimates suggest this is about 4 times the national average. We live in an average size 3 bed end of terrace. 
Myself, partner and baby live here. I started maternity leave November 2019. So I would expect to see an increase, through the winter especially, just not this much! 

My OH supplied the meter readings online each month. We had someone visit from Avro to read the meter, on one occasion.

Could there have been a mistake somewhere along the line? How can we go about working out how we've incurred high usage? Or am I clutching at straws... 

Gerry1

If you're saying that you used 12,500kWh of electricity, that's certainly high if you have gas central heating.  The gas figure is absolutely fine if it's 13,500kWh, but 2.7p/kWh is very expensive.  Make sure you're not using any electricity for heating, e.g. fan heaters, oil filled radiators, electric showers, immersion heaters, etc.

Read the electricity meter at least daily, look at the red flashing light and switch a few circuits off to see whether the flashes suddenly slow down.  Also switch everything off at the consumer unit and make sure the reading never changes and the red light never flashes.

MWT

The gas number is not horrible assuming you are using gas for your heating/hot water.

The electricity is where I'd start looking for the problem.

First the obvious things, check the meter number on the bill matches the number on your meter and do a basic check to confirm it is your meter (turn off everything at the fuse box and make sure the meter stops going up, then turn it on again and verify it is showing power used again).

Do you use electricity for any form of heating? Electric shower perhaps? .. immersion heater for hot water? ... or fan heaters/panel heaters in any rooms?

greyteam1959

Wonder why Avro have let you get such a big debit balance without increasing your monthly DD ??

Robin9

Your partner hasn't done his monitoring very well has he. Get him to start keeping his own records, read the meter and look at bottom line!   EDIT -Apologies I see he has been reading the meter.

Have you any ACTUAL meter readings on your bills ? or are they all ESTIMATED.?   Are you reading the meters yourself - no meter reader will call. 

I wonder if you are reading the meters correctly - there are challenges with most meters, new and old. Has your meter got a little keypad?

PS Dual fuels is generally not the best way to go. Put your actual consumption into the comparison sites for gas and electricity separately. 

MWT

A photo of the meters would be helpful just so we can make informed suggestions based on the type of meters involved.

Something else to look for on the bills, even if they all use your readings (marked with a 'C') are there any sudden jumps in usage from one month to the next?

You would expect winter bills to be higher than summer bills but you shouldn't suddenly see a bill go up by a couple of thousand units one month for example.

Emam198

Thank you for the advice given so far. Certainly gives us a number of things to check through. 

Yes, it's 12500 kWh that has been logged on our elec usage. The bill states "£0.027350 per kWh" for gas, have I interpreted that correctly at 2.7 pence?

The only thing we use for heating via is electricity is the shower. I'm unpleasantly surprised, if it's something that can be this draining on kWh. Other things I'm worried have contributed - use of a tumble dryer and we have a chest freezer in the garage. 


I too have wondered why we've been allowed to run up such a large outstanding balance. In hindsight, having a low fixed monthly payment was too good to be true.

Robin9

Emam198 said:

Yes, it's 12500 kWh that has been logged on our elec usage.

Where ?   Is this just what they quote on their bill as a predicted annual figure - if its based on estimated readings its not worth the paper its written on.
Please post the opening Elec reading from when your first became an Avro  and a reading from today please.

MWT

Emam198 said:

The only thing we use for heating via is electricity is the shower. I'm unpleasantly surprised, if it's something that can be this draining on kWh. Other things I'm worried have contributed - use of a tumble dryer and we have a chest freezer in the garage.

Short showers are not usually a problem, but at a typical 7.5kW, long showers can add up really fast...

If you each take a 15 minute shower once a day that is 3.75kWh right there, or nearly 1,400kWh per year.

The chest freezer shouldn't be a problem, will typically use no more than 1kWh a day, but if the compressor is running constantly due to dust on the heat exchanger or a lack of refrigerant that cost can go up a lot.

Even the tumble drier isn't usually that terrible as long as it isn't being run 24/7.

One thing to check is the hot water tank, (assuming you have one) make sure there isn't an immersion heater fitted to it that has been accidentally left on ...

Gerry1

Emam198 said:

The bill states "£0.027350 per kWh" for gas, have I interpreted that correctly at 2.7 pence?

Probably not if it excludes 5% VAT. Either way it's dreadfully expensive.  Get some competitive quotations - Robin Hood's 12m Summer Saver is likely to be withdrawn at any moment and may be competitive at around 2.0p/kWh (but probably a higher standing charge, so do the sums).  You'd need to clear the Avro account otherwise a switch will be blocked.

Emam198 said:

The only thing we use for heating via is electricity is the shower. I'm unpleasantly surprised, if it's something that can be this draining on kWh. Other things I'm worried have contributed - use of a tumble dryer and we have a chest freezer in the garage.

Do the sums.  A leisurely 10 minute 10kW shower twice per person per day = 6.6kWh per day, 2333kWh / £319 per year !  Not sensible when you can heat the water with gas at about a fifth or sixth of the cost.  Are you sure the immersion heaters are both permanently switched off?

Emam198

Robin9 said:

Your partner hasn't done his monitoring very well has he. Get him to start keeping his own records, read the meter and look at bottom line!   EDIT -Apologies I see he has been reading the meter.

Have you any ACTUAL meter readings on your bills ? or are they all ESTIMATED.?   Are you reading the meters yourself - no meter reader will call. 

I wonder if you are reading the meters correctly - there are challenges with most meters, new and old. Has your meter got a little keypad?

PS Dual fuels is generally not the best way to go. Put your actual consumption into the comparison sites for gas and electricity separately. 

Completely agree with you on your first point, I was quite displeased to be polite! But also hold myself to account, as I should have been checking in too.
I've examined the statement further, it appears that 'estimated' has been quoted throughout. Furthermore, in the meter readings section, 'E' has been quoted at the start of each line.
So we (or more accurately, he) had been reading the meter each month and submitting the figures to Avro online. We had just one random visit, a month ago, from an Avro employee to read the meter. There is no keypad on the meter. I will come back to this thread as soon as I can, with start of contract readings, current reading and a photo of the meter itself. Thank you for your advice.