Energy bill - What is going on?

krennis93

Hello everyone! I could use some detectives for an energy bill crisis, as a international student in the UK I am totally lost and confused.
Energy provider: Eon
Bill: 115-115 quid/ month. We set up a monthly payment plan, which is supposed to adjust and  balance out at zero for each quarterly statements/ However, even after monthly payments, we had to pay 200 pounds at the end of the quarter.
Living situation: One bedroom all-electric flat, occupied by my Girlfriend and I. We have four Myson finesse electric panel heaters, but only use 2.  The 2 we use, we set to 20C, and they run from 7am to 8pm (we are home all day). On the touch, they are lukewarm. We have an electric boiler on a timer, which we heat 1.5 hours in the morning, and one hour at night.  Our energy use is moderate to low. We don't have a television, and we mostly just study on laptops from 8-5pm. 
I see the average rates for a normal apartment are about 30-50 quid a month, and EON estimated our bill at 45?  

Whats going in? Is 115 bill normal for all electric? I wish I had known this before I came to the UK if so!  I feel lied to by the energy company, with estimates at 45 when it is double.

tim_p

Do you know the exact model of those panel heaters - they range from 500w to 2 kW. To be honest those figures your paying seem about par for the course for an all electric property, particularly when you say you run the rads at 20 degrees for 13 hours, plus 2.5 hours of an unidentified boiler. Whilst the two rads won’t be on all of the day (well, depending on property, they could well be) if you assume they are then the smaller 500w ones will consume 13kWh between them and the 2kW would be a staggering 52 kWh.  Start by reading your meters now, entering the figures into a spreadsheet and read again tonight at, say, 8pm. Repeat the process tomorrow at 7am and then regularly at those times for a week or two. That way you will get a good idea of your actual usage per day. This will be decreasing as we move further into spring.
Unless the property is super insulated then £45 is highly unlikely, particularly with your described usage I’m afraid. 

JohnB47

Well, it is typical for replies to a post like this to be 'all electric is the most expensive option'. So I won't say that. 30 - 50 quid a month for all electric seems very optimistic.
What you could check, if you haven't already, is that your bills do indeed relate to your meter. So hopefully you can access your meter and check that it relates to your bill and it's definitely yours (typically one person watches the meter while another turns a kettle of water on and off to make sure it reacts). Otherwise, the only thing I can suggest is that you take meter readings each day, to get a full picture of your energy usage.
If the daily usage still seems too high, perhaps try switching things off for  24 hours - first the heaters, then the hot water. This can narrow down the high usage items.

Hasbeen

krennis93 said:

Hello everyone! I could use some detectives for an energy bill crisis, as a international student in the UK I am totally lost and confused.
Energy provider: Eon
Bill: 115-115 quid/ month. We set up a monthly payment plan, which is supposed to adjust and  balance out at zero for each quarterly statements/ However, even after monthly payments, we had to pay 200 pounds at the end of the quarter.
Living situation: One bedroom all-electric flat, occupied by my Girlfriend and I. We have four Myson finesse electric panel heaters, but only use 2.  The 2 we use, we set to 20C, and they run from 7am to 8pm (we are home all day). On the touch, they are lukewarm. We have an electric boiler on a timer, which we heat 1.5 hours in the morning, and one hour at night.  Our energy use is moderate to low. We don't have a television, and we mostly just study on laptops from 8-5pm. 
I see the average rates for a normal apartment are about 30-50 quid a month, and EON estimated our bill at 45?  

Whats going in? Is 115 bill normal for all electric? I wish I had known this before I came to the UK if so!  I feel lied to by the energy company, with estimates at 45 when it is double.

You are on a really expensive heating set up.  

Usually in the UK heating for the elderly is 20c. But normally for young/fit 18c?  So turn your heaters down.

Why even have them on at this time?

I live in the coldest wettest part of the UK and my heating is off all day there are 2 of us here.

EON estimates DD on what information you have given them.

You have not been lied to,  as you gave them wrong usage. You are using more.

So GIGO "Garbage In Garbage Out"

Are you providing monthly readings?

Why is the electric boiler on 2.5 hrs per day?

Check your bills meter number against your actual meter number to ensure you are being billed for the correct meter.

Robin9

Read your meters NOW and let us now what the readings were that you gave to Eon together with those on any other bill - include the letters A,C and E please.

I don't know where you got your £30-50 from  - may be correct for GAS but certainly not for Electric.
Eon may be looking at historic data but for all they know the flat may have been empty or the occupiers couldn't afford the bills and turned the heating off.

Gerry1

In a nutshell, the bad news is that it's the most expensive heating that it's possible to have and you're almost certainly not on the cheapest tariff so it will cost you a fortune.

Ideally you need to move to a property with gas central heating, with night storage heaters on an Economy 7 tariff as second best.

If you are stuck where you are, turn down the thermostat, work out your likely annual consumption in kWh and start comparing single rate tariffs (i.e. not Economy 7) with Citizens Advice and 'Which? Switch'.  Just compare annual costs, always ignore all projections and savings claims.  Also have a look at the customer service ratings on Citizens Advice and the 'Add your feedback on energy supplier xxxx...' threads here on the forum: Symbio are cheap but might not be the best choice ! Neon Reef might be a good choice if it's near the top of the results lists.

Then remember to send monthly readings, keep your own records and check that your DD payments are keeping up with your usage, it's not All You Can Eat: if you use more than expected your DD will be increased twice, once to reflect your higher usage and again to reclaim your arrears.

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena

krennis93 said:

Hello everyone! I could use some detectives for an energy bill crisis, as a international student in the UK I am totally lost and confused.
Energy provider: Eon
Bill: 115-115 quid/ month. We set up a monthly payment plan, which is supposed to adjust and  balance out at zero for each quarterly statements/ However, even after monthly payments, we had to pay 200 pounds at the end of the quarter.
Living situation: One bedroom all-electric flat, occupied by my Girlfriend and I. We have four Myson finesse electric panel heaters, but only use 2.  The 2 we use, we set to 20C, and they run from 7am to 8pm (we are home all day). On the touch, they are lukewarm. We have an electric boiler on a timer, which we heat 1.5 hours in the morning, and one hour at night.  Our energy use is moderate to low. We don't have a television, and we mostly just study on laptops from 8-5pm. 
I see the average rates for a normal apartment are about 30-50 quid a month, and EON estimated our bill at 45?  

Whats going in? Is 115 bill normal for all electric? I wish I had known this before I came to the UK if so!  I feel lied to by the energy company, with estimates at 45 when it is double.

Morning krennis93 and welcome to the forums.

Thank you for the replies so far. I can only echo what others have said.

The first thing to do is to check the reads, have we opened the account from the meter reads you provided when you moved in? Is the account now billed to an accurate read? Check the reads on your bill against your actual meter, along with the serial number.

If you have set up a monthly payment plan, it sounds like you have a Direct Debit. Monthly Direct Debits are estimates of future usage based on current prices and what's been used previously. The aim is to achieve as close as possible to a zero balance by the annual review. As Gerry1 has said, the Direct Debit can change to reflect the amount of energy that you use.

There is a Direct Debit manager tool that you can use on your online account, to ensure you're paying the correct amount. If you put some accurate reads on first you can adjust the payments by 20%.

Thank you

Helena