Bulb increasing bills

coops175

5 weeks ago I got an e-mail saying my electric monthly payment was increasing from £96 to £145. Today I got another email saying it was increasing from £145 to £235. When I challenged it they said it was due to my usage and calculated use over the next 12 months so in a month my bill had increased by 250%. So I went through their calculations. They estimated our annual usage to be 9200kwh. However, when I looked over the past 3 years our usage was between 6500 and 7500 per year. I believe the company has deliberately inflated our estimated use in order to increase payments for a short term financial gain. When I complained with the data, they agreed to reduce the bills back down. Please do review their calculations if they send an increase to your monthly payments.

kacie

Are you sending them regular meter readings, or are they estimating it? 

Verdigris

Do you send in monthly readings? If you don't, the supplier will assume the worst.

Neil_Jones

coops175 said:

5 weeks ago I got an e-mail saying my electric monthly payment was increasing from £96 to £145. Today I got another email saying it was increasing from £145 to £235. When I challenged it they said it was due to my usage and calculated use over the next 12 months so in a month my bill had increased by 250%. So I went through their calculations. They estimated our annual usage to be 9200kwh. However, when I looked over the past 3 years our usage was between 6500 and 7500 per year. I believe the company has deliberately inflated our estimated use in order to increase payments for a short term financial gain. When I complained with the data, they agreed to reduce the bills back down. Please do review their calculations if they send an increase to your monthly payments.

This sort of situation is almost always caused by not reading meters regularly.  If they get no data, they have to guess.  And they will.  Wildly.

[Deleted User]

The thread title is somewhat misleading. Bulb is not increasing your bill. All monthly payments made on account are credited to your account and charges for energy used are then deducted from the credit balance. In these situations, the truth will out. If your calculations are correct, then you will end up with a healthy credit balance. Remember a credit/debit balance is only accurate if based on an actual meter reading then for one day only.

Fyne

I had the same issue with SSE earlier this year, when I queried with them, they finally admitted they take the actual readings closed to the last year to estimate usage. In my case this was for a 15 month period, due to them estimating usage even though I had provided readings. This included 2 winter periods....DOH !!  Maybe something similar has happened to you. 

EssexHebridean

This was exactly the season we left Bulb earlier this year. A sudden massive increase to the monthly payment in spite of no change in usage, regular meter readings, and their own forecast as referred to on the statements confirming that the money they were asking from us was not in line with what was required to service the account. Spoke with customer service who actually agreed it was excessive, but weren't able to reduce it more than £5 a month. Quite literally "the system says no" and could not be overridden. A couple of weeks later the news of their financial issues became widely known, and we realised what was going on. 

It's all well and good saying that it's all fine because the money will be sitting on the account, but in the case of the level of increase that the OP is talking about, that may well be the difference between being able to meet their monthly commitments, and not. It's all well and good having credit sitting in an account far above the level required, but that will not pay the council tax, meet the bill in the supermarket or buy the kids a new pair of school shoes. 

[Deleted User]

EssexHebridean said:

It's all well and good saying that it's all fine because the money will be sitting on the account, but in the case of the level of increase that the OP is talking about, that may well be the difference between being able to meet their monthly commitments, and not. It's all well and good having credit sitting in an account far above the level required, but that will not pay the council tax, meet the bill in the supermarket or buy the kids a new pair of school shoes. 

Think usage AND increases in the Ofgem Cap in April and October 22 for variable tariffs. I am guessing that DD reviews for those on variable tariffs are based on a rolling 12 month period whereas fixed tariff reviews are based on the length of the remaining contract.

EssexHebridean

Yes - the first increase applied to the OP would, I would suggest, have been reasonable allowing for increasing costs. the second however seems excessive. In our case this was back in the spring, well before the current situation really became apparent, and indeed at exactly the time when we would already have been expecting to begin to build a credit as well.