Expensive bills

R22h235

Hi, 
I’m new here and I’m not sure if this has been asked before (sorry if it has)
I have just moved into a 2 bed flat with my partner and everything is electric. We have an immersion heater and Rointe electric radiators.
Our weekly top up on our key is roughly £70. As you can imagine we are struggling to find this. I have had previously a 4 bed house and the bills were nowhere near this high. Any ideas what I can do to save money? 

Tried to get a monthly DD meter but E.on said no. 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

Gerry1

Welcome to the forum.

Unfortunately you have the worst possible system: no gas, not even storage heaters, and a pre-payment meter with an expensive company.  It will always be cripplingly expensive.

Presumably you're renting, so the only solution is to move to a property with GCH PDQ.

jbuchanangb

I hope you registered with the energy supplier as the new occupier the day you moved in and obtained your own payment key. If you are using someone else's payment key you might be paying off their debt. All electric really is the most expensive. You have to learn to  manage it to keep the bills down. Immersion heater OFF except when you need to have a bath. Room heaters OFF except when you are in the room. Make sure all light bulbs are LED. In my house when I moved in there were thirty 50W halogen bulbs - all now 5W LED. This is the approach you have to take.

E.ON_Company_Representative

R22h235 said:

Hi, 
I’m new here and I’m not sure if this has been asked before (sorry if it has)
I have just moved into a 2 bed flat with my partner and everything is electric. We have an immersion heater and Rointe electric radiators.
Our weekly top up on our key is roughly £70. As you can imagine we are struggling to find this. I have had previously a 4 bed house and the bills were nowhere near this high. Any ideas what I can do to save money? 

Tried to get a monthly DD meter but E.on said no. 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

Hi R22h235, I hope you're settling in well to your new home. 

As Gerry1 mentioned the type of electric heating you have is probably one of the more expensive ways to heat a property. Thankfully in cases like this we see a huge drop-off in spring/summer when you don't need the heating on anymore. 

It sounds like you've already been in touch with us but if not please do make contact so we can set the account up in your name. If the account isn't in your name there is a small chance you could be paying some debt back through the meter. If this is the case it can of course be reimbursed - but most debt repayment rates are £3 - £10 per week so would still only account for a small portion of your top ups.

Please insert the key into your meter and press the button to cycle through the screens. They're labelled alphabetically and you'll be after the following; 

S -	Total debt outstanding – How much debt is left to pay
​T -	​Debt repayment rate - How much debt is being taken on a weekly basis

Screen T may still show a debt repayment rate but it would only be applicable if there's a figure shown on screen S. If there is please get in touch as we'll need to organise a new key for you. 

For the most part we are happy to replace Prepayment Meters for credit meters. This is subject to a credit check. Did you go through this process? If the credit check failed then we wouldn't be able to offer the exchange. 

There will be others on here much more familiar with the workings of the electric heaters. Our first port of call in this respect is always to limit use of them as much as possible, whilst ensuring you of course keep the property at a comfortable temperature. As well as this check to see if they're on a timer and might be coming on when not necessarily needed. Same goes for the immersion heater. If it has a 'boost' button it's often best to avoid using this entirely.

Thanks, Matt