Excessive energy bill price - help??

Gerry1

QrizB said:

Gerry1 said:

drummergirl95 said:

Our tariff (which is what we were put on as the rest of our complex uses) is Ecotricity Green Electricity Variable. It says our price per unit since the price change is 34.03p

You've been well and truly ripped off, probably by someone getting a kickback at your expense.

I'm going to disagree with Gerry1 here; Ecotricity is a perfectly respectable supplier and if you want the greenest possible electricity they're one of the top options.

IMHO it's not very respectable for them to give fake quotations for Economy 7.  They don't bother asking for your day and night usage, only the total, so their so-called quotation can't be accurate.

The OP's best chance might be to switch to their Out Of Contract rates, depending on whether they signed up and accepted any harsh Ts & Cs such as a £200 exit fee.

MaryNB

drummergirl95 said:

Gerry1 said:

The fact that you and the other users have been set up with one of the most expensive tariffs in the country should set alarm bells ringing.  You need to go through everything with a fine tooth comb to make sure you're not being well and truly ripped off.

We’ve had no other issues living here and all been fine. I’m not sure what else to do other than tomorrow do what others have said and insist on testing our meter and making sure it is definitely ours. 

That is really disheartening to hear. We’ll have to see if we can switch but I doubt anyone will take us.

A lot of energy companies have pulled their products from comparison websites so you won't get much info from those sites. You may have to phone different companies to get info on their products. Many aren't making it easy to sign up online - Octopus are actively discouraging people from signing up to their fixed tariff (which, for my region, is also 34p/kWh). I'm not saying don't try, it just might be more tedious than before.

theoretica

Another sanity check would be to talk to the neighbours - are you using more or less electricity than they are?

You have two switches marked heater in the consumer unit - definitely both go to the panel heaters?  There isn't something else providing heating you haven't noticed?  I would tempted to flick both to off and see what happens to temperature and your usage.  But definitely find what timings you have on the water heater too.

drummergirl95

theoretica said:

Another sanity check would be to talk to the neighbours - are you using more or less electricity than they are?

You have two switches marked heater in the consumer unit - definitely both go to the panel heaters?  There isn't something else providing heating you haven't noticed?  I would tempted to flick both to off and see what happens to temperature and your usage.  But definitely find what timings you have on the water heater too.

Thanks to a helpful user above, we managed to sort out the timer for the immersion heater. It was set to come on 3x per day for two hours - we’ve set it to once now.

the two heater buttons I assume are for the two panel heaters and a heated towel rail in the bathroom - we never have this on. 

drummergirl95

I’m just completely baffled by the usage. How can it have doubled?? I expected it to be slightly higher but double is absurd. 

bagand96

drummergirl95 said:

theoretica said:

Another sanity check would be to talk to the neighbours - are you using more or less electricity than they are?

You have two switches marked heater in the consumer unit - definitely both go to the panel heaters?  There isn't something else providing heating you haven't noticed?  I would tempted to flick both to off and see what happens to temperature and your usage.  But definitely find what timings you have on the water heater too.

Thanks to a helpful user above, we managed to sort out the timer for the immersion heater. It was set to come on 3x per day for two hours - we’ve set it to once now.

the two heater buttons I assume are for the two panel heaters and a heated towel rail in the bathroom - we never have this on. 

The immersion running for 6 hours a day could well be the problem. Assuming it's 3kW that could be 18 kWh a day (in reality it should be less as it cuts in and out depending on the water temperature). But it could still easily be chewing through 300-400 a month. 

meinnit

Great to see everyone contribute to get to the bottom of this!

drummergirl95

Yes, thanks everyone. I really appreciate the help. 

drummergirl95

Hi everyone, I just wanted to give an update on this - I INSISTED that we saw our meter and do the sanity test (turned all our appliances and heating on), AND WE ARE PAYING ANOTHER APARTMENTS BILLS!!! I saw it with my own eyes! Another apartments meter was flashing like crazy!!

I am so happy just to have an answer for this even though it isn’t fully resolved yet, so thank you so much to everyone that helped me with this.

MWT

drummergirl95 said:

Hi everyone, I just wanted to give an update on this - I INSISTED that we saw our meter and do the sanity test (turned all our appliances and heating on), AND WE ARE PAYING ANOTHER APARTMENTS BILLS!!! I saw it with my own eyes! Another apartments meter was flashing like crazy!!

So much for the 'creep test' the building management supposedly did for you...

This is why we always suggest doing this sanity test and why we usually suggest turning everything on rather than everything off.