British Gas new customer

cmbrookes

I would have contacted British Gas to ask this question but it’s impossible to get through on their live chat and the phone lines are closed now. So they’ve told me how much my monthly direct debit will be £221. Would it be cheaper for me to submit meter readings regularly and how would this work? Would my direct debit change?

400ixl

Is £221 about what you would expect to pay if you took your yearly usage and calculated your total usage and divided it by 12?

If you don't have a smart meter then yes it is worth doing monthly readings. BG would review every 3 months I believe for your Monthly DD amount.

TheGardener

I guess your DD will reduce if you use less than the estimate the £221 is based on. Are you a new resident in the property or have you switched? The estimate will be based on the previous usage (you or the previous occupier) £221 doesn't sound outrageous if you don't have any credit coming out of the summer. Over 12 months that figure would be just about the mythical 'average' of the EPG

cmbrookes

TheGardener said:

I guess your DD will reduce if you use less than the estimate the £221 is based on. Are you a new resident in the property or have you switched? The estimate will be based on the previous usage (you or the previous occupier) £221 doesn't sound outrageous if you don't have any credit coming out of the summer. Over 12 months that figure would be just about the mythical 'average' of the EPG

I’m a new customer and they’ve based it on how many of us are in our house hold

cmbrookes

400ixl said:

Is £221 about what you would expect to pay if you took your yearly usage and calculated your total usage and divided it by 12?

If you don't have a smart meter then yes it is worth doing monthly readings. BG would review every 3 months I believe for your Monthly DD amount.

Can I request a smart meter from them for free?

400ixl

You can, you will join a queue though in all likelyhood as they seem to be way behind demand, but worth getting on the list.

fly-catchers

If its anything like me every time I log on it suggests I am paying too much and comes up with another figure! Mine started at £534 and eventually went to £141 after a few months! Now its going back up!

Robin9

fly-catchers said:

If its anything like me every time I log on it suggests I am paying too much and comes up with another figure! Mine started at £534 and eventually went to £141 after a few months! Now its going back up!

This is to be rxpected. Thr morr info it gets ftom you from monyhly reads the more accurate the estimates will be.

Ant555

cmbrookes said:

Would it be cheaper for me to submit meter readings regularly and how would this work? Would my direct debit change?

My British Gas account sends me an email every month asking for readings - in the 16 months I have been a customer, the DD has been changed twice by them presumably as they gain more knowledge on my actual usage. Once up and once down.

As you are new to British Gas does that mean you have moved into a new house and dont yet know your usage or have you been in this place a while and do actually know your likely annual usage in Kwh?

wild666

cmbrookes said:

I would have contacted British Gas to ask this question but it’s impossible to get through on their live chat and the phone lines are closed now. So they’ve told me how much my monthly direct debit will be £221. Would it be cheaper for me to submit meter readings regularly and how would this work? Would my direct debit change?

When I got my first place back in 2008 my DD was set at the average usage figures of 3100 for electric and 12,000 for gas. If you start turning off everything not in use except the fridge, freezer and router you will soon see your DD fall. I used to leave everything in standby mode until a couple of years ago but even standby can add hundreds of kWh to the electric bill. I cut my usage from 2100 to 1300 kWh by turning everything off rather than using standby mode and I also cut the gas usage by lowering the boiler temperatures to 50 degrees for water, I've since cut that to 40 degrees as I boil all the water I need except for the shower, then 55 degrees for the heating, again I lowered that to 52 degrees recently as I would rather use a hot water bottle to take the chill off me than put the heating on. I also lowered the thermostat to 16 degrees, again it used to be 18 degrees until recently. 

cmbrookes

Ant555 said:

cmbrookes said:

Would it be cheaper for me to submit meter readings regularly and how would this work? Would my direct debit change?

My British Gas account sends me an email every month asking for readings - in the 16 months I have been a customer, the DD has been changed twice by them presumably as they gain more knowledge on my actual usage. Once up and once down.

As you are new to British Gas does that mean you have moved into a new house and dont yet know your usage or have you been in this place a while and do actually know your likely annual usage in Kwh?

I am a brand new customer so don’t know usage yet. They estimated it based on house hold numbers.