My mother's energy bills

Georget79

Thankyou to everyone who helped with good advice and tips for energy saving, I'm in the process of cutting down consumption which I'm sure will be a great help.

I've also just spoken to Scottish Power, asking why her bills are £417 per month when uswitch and this website calculate it should be £315. They asked for the annual figures of usage we had on the recent bill, and he said the figures they had were higher and would explain why the estimates are different. He waffled on about how it doesn't matter in the bigger picture, it all works out evenly and that I can check it all out in historical bills. 

I gave him up to date readings however and the bill for September is now £173 instead of £417, and was taken from the £338 credit. So a huge relief there.

I'll now need to do more research on her bills to understand what he was on about and why she was being charged so much before, but thanks to everyone for your help it has been much appreciated. 

ariarnia

i think what he means is that what you pay isn't the bill so you're still only paying for the energy you are using.

how it works is you pay money each month into like a pot held by the energy company. they estimate the annual amount you will used based on what you used last year then divide it by 12. they then take what's actually owed (what you used) each month from that pot. but the pot doesn't go away so if you've overpaid then it's still held there for when you have a higher bill.  

really you would want or expect to have a credit on the account right now as you will have paid more than you used over the warmer summer months and then will use that credit so the bills aren't higher in the colder winter months when you are using more energy or when the rates have gone up.