Incomprehensible British Gas bills and debits

jessy1

I do not understand British Gas charges at all. Gas & electric from them. I was paying £220 per month Peoples tariff. Then I owed them £602 as a debt. My tariff has ended. They today quoted me £450 per month direct debit to include the debt as a monthly repayment. I seriously can not afford this amount at all ( I have applied for a British Gas energy fund, waiting to hear) At a loss what to do. I do try to conserve energy and have a new condenser boiler just fitted which is supposed to reduce usage of gas? My annual electric is 6684 kWh & gas is 19042 kWh according to British Gas on a three bed house. I know from this site that not many options but what can I do when have cut back and have no extra money to pay such a large monthly bill? Can I demand cheaper monthly bills - seeing as there is an energy rebate coming later in the year £600 I was told by an agent?!

pochase

There is no £600 rebate. There is a £400 grant for everybody that will be credited to your electricity account, but there is no information how exactly this will happen at the moment.

If you are on means tested benefits there is another £650 that will be paid directly to you. Also no information when and how, plus a few other potential payments.

At the moment you will need to pay a direct debit of £290 to cover the £3491 cost at the current SVT, plus paying back the £600 you are in debt.

Unfortunately the current prediction for the increase in October will take you annual cost up to £5450. So even the £450 (how much of it is for paying back the debt per month?) will not be sufficient.



As you can see the new monthly payment if you continue to use the same amount of energy is without debt repayment already £450 using the predicted October SVT.

Your energy usage is extremely high, more than double for electricity, and more than 50% higher than average for gas.

Can you give a bit more details why your usage is that high? Do you have an aquarium, a hot tub, swimming pool or garden pond for example? 

Edit:
The rates above will be slightly off as i don't know what region you are in, but that will only be a few £ and won't change your situation overall.

brewerdave

jessy1 said:

I do not understand British Gas charges at all. Gas & electric from them. I was paying £220 per month Peoples tariff. Then I owed them £602 as a debt. My tariff has ended. They today quoted me £450 per month direct debit to include the debt as a monthly repayment. I seriously can not afford this amount at all ( I have applied for a British Gas energy fund, waiting to hear) At a loss what to do. I do try to conserve energy and have a new condenser boiler just fitted which is supposed to reduce usage of gas? My annual electric is 6684 kWh & gas is 19042 kWh according to British Gas on a three bed house. I know from this site that not many options but what can I do when have cut back and have no extra money to pay such a large monthly bill? Can I demand cheaper monthly bills - seeing as there is an energy rebate coming later in the year £600 I was told by an agent?!

Your gas usage is extraordinarily high for a 3 bedroom house! I have a 5 bedroom house and a wife who feels the cold but we are using ~ 15500kwh for cooking, heating and hot water. Are you heating rooms which aren't being used? Are you used to having long hot baths ?
And your electric usage is more than double the national average. You need to look critically at what you are using that is pulling such high electric loads. Fish tanks ,an EV, immersion heater left on ,electric shower (and kids who stay in for hours !!) ??
Bit of effort and you should be able to knock ££s off your expected bills.

jessy1

Thank you for replies. I am thinking that the £450 is to cover me for winter usage & £100 of that is to cover the ‘debt’ of £600 as my year with British Gas is October ‘21 to October ‘22. Also the agent did say about 50% increase coming in next few months so I could be looking at £500 per month after October ‘22? I have taken weekly readings so far doubting their estimates for energy usage, but unfortunately they were near enough right! Five people in a draughty, poorly insulated house with some single glazing ( I hang old duvets on single glazed bits all winter!, have insulation door surrounds done myself, chucked more insulation into the attic - badger landlord for more but they useless mostly apart from them being obliged to replace boiler which has probably being cause of high gas bills) very old boiler until very recently. Also in cold months the heating was/ is on 24/7 as we all feel the cold especially myself with asthma, thyroid illness and one son who has a condition where always cold and already lives under blankets! We have a lot of computers, tv’s and gaming going on, washing machine - unavoidable life. I did read the £400 energy rebate is coming in mid July but does British Gas get that paid to them? I have looked at Utility Warehouse - the only company offering a lower payment right now but not sure whether their £300 per month quote is realistic and afraid to jump at the moment as everything is so unsettled. I could end up worse again? 

pochase

The £400 energy grant is not going to start before October, at the moment it is still in planning state and there is not even information how it will exactly work except for "will be paid over 6 month", which many read as there will be 6 payments of £66.66, but that is just educated guessing. And yes it will be paid to BG if it happens as planned. Or currently it will not be paid out, the government seems to plan that the suppliers just credit the electricity account, and are compensated by not paying VAT and corporation tax until the debt is made up, which the suppliers don't want to do.

Before they know what is exactly happening and when, no supplier will reduce your debit order. Who knows, everything might still change again as it did between February and May.

Utility Warehouse can not be much cheaper, if they are offering a lower payment that is because they don't know about the debt, and most likely use lower estimates for your usage. Compare their unit rates and the unit rates you are currently paying. Also to get their "good" rates you need to take additional services from them like mobile contract, boiler cover and broadband. Often you cannot just change the existing contract for those easily.

I hope your gas use will come down with a new boiler, but you also need to be aware that the last winter was very mild, for many the gas use was down by 20 to 30% from the winter before. So you might want to check out the energy saving and "heat the human" threads on the forum.

jessy1

Thank you for advice - I will check out ‘heat the human’ threads on the forums.

BUFF

You also need to check that your condensing boiler is actually set up to condense most of the time otherwise you won't see much of the energy saving possible.
Also, what heating controls do you have (programmer/roomstat/TRVs etc.)?