Aged parent in dire straits with energy costs

MikeJXE

If the £67 has gone to the energy supplier that would be deducted before the bill was totalled.

In my case the £67 goes to my energy supplier and is then forwarded to my bank and not deducted from the energy bill

MattMattMattUK

Rimkh2 said:

Gas per kWh is trebling to £10.00 per unit. I will be visiting him again early next month so will go through all of these things again.

The gas cost is not £10.00 per kWh, it is around 10.3p per kWh. 

Rimkh2 said:

He has received his £600.00 winter payment. 

Good, but please make sure he has a full benefits audit.

Rimkh2 said:

The £67.00 per month I believe, goes first to the energy supplier, then should be deducted from his bill. Does that mean they want £467.00 per month now?

The £67 is refunded to the same account the Direct Debit is taken from, he will already have received that three times.

You first need to establish his annual usage, then divide that by twelve to get a rough idea of where his monthly payments should be. Remember that EDF only bill every six months so depending where in the cycle he is there could be a large credit because he has not been billed for a few months. 

One of the other key things to look at is his energy usage, heating water with electricity is the most expensive way to do it, so is space heating, so shifting to gas when he can will be considerably cheaper. It may also be worth looking at how fuel efficient his home is, things like draft excluders can pay for themselves in weeks, loft insulation in months, there may also be grants or charitable assistance for that. 

MattMattMattUK

Rimkh2 said:

It is nearly impossible to account for his gas consumption as the bill only shows the number of kWh used and no meter readings. The smart meter for electricity was installed in the last year. 

Is his gas not smart then? When was the last reading submitted? On the bill does have "E" next to the readings for estimates, smart reads, their reads, your reads etc.

poppy12345

MattMattMattUK said:

Rimkh2 said:

The £67.00 per month I believe, goes first to the energy supplier, then should be deducted from his bill. Does that mean they want £467.00 per month now?

The £67 is refunded to the same account the Direct Debit is taken from, he will already have received that three times.

Not always, it depends on the energy supplier. Mine just reduces the monthly DD.

MattMattMattUK

poppy12345 said:

MattMattMattUK said:

Rimkh2 said:

The £67.00 per month I believe, goes first to the energy supplier, then should be deducted from his bill. Does that mean they want £467.00 per month now?

The £67 is refunded to the same account the Direct Debit is taken from, he will already have received that three times.

Not always, it depends on the energy supplier. Mine just reduces the monthly DD.

They said that they are paying by Direct Debit with EDF and EDF process the payment as a refund into the Direct Debit account if paying by that method.

p00hsticks

Rimkh2 said:

As far as the £400.00 and my comment about exploitation goes. His DD was £200.00 and he is more than £600.00 in credit on his account. That implies he is paying 25% too much. On that basis his account will likely go to £1200.00 in credit. Before privatisation everyone was billed on their actual usage and paid upon bill, 3 months in arrears. Since the introduction of DD my dad is now paid up 3 months in advance. Multiply him by several million customers, that’s a lot of money in the pot. I have an aunt who is much the same. She is £1000.00 in credit.

I can't comment on the way EDF work but with British Gas you can adjust your DD amount if you feel you are paying too much or too little (i'm not sure if there is a lower limit beyond which they will not let you go). They also do a review every six months where they will refund any exessive credit balance - we got a £350 refund a few months ago becasue we were £500 in credit (a bit annoying actually as we had been deliberately overpaying a bit in order to build up a bit of a buffer for winter when we came off our fixed tariff). It's also usually possible to revert to just paying bills as and when they come in, but you might be charged more and/or be restricted in what tariffs are available, and need to be aware of what your bill is likely to be and financially disciplined enough to put the money aside to pay it as it goes in.

FreeBear

Rimkh2 said:

It is nearly impossible to account for his gas consumption as the bill only shows the number of kWh used and no meter readings. The smart meter for electricity was installed in the last year. 

I have yet to see a bill from a supplier showing gas consumption in purely KWh terms - There is always a meter reading (estimated or actual) along with a calculation to show how they arrived at the KWh usage. Pretty sure that is an OFGEM requirement..

One thing to check, especially if the gas meter has been replaced in recent years - The meter will be reading in cubic metres. Some suppliers are a little tardy in updating records when replacing an old imperial meter and keep on billing the customer for (100s) cubic feet. This means that they are charging 2.83 times what they should be.

Check the bill, and make sure the units being charged for match what the meter actually reads.

Krakkkers

HillStreetBlues said:

Rimkh2 said:

 The charge for gas is expressed on the bill in kWh. The meter counts cubic metres. A little research and I found a rough conversion method.

I believe a ball park figure is £3.25 a unit plus service charge, that tally with your research?

Price of gas per metric unit will be around £1.15p

ariarnia

if theres a lot of credit on the account is it worth checking when the last bill was actually for? given the recent thread about edf and 6 monthly billing. could be the credit is only there because the op is due a bill in the next couple of months. 

Jami74

ariarnia said:

if theres a lot of credit on the account is it worth checking when the last bill was actually for? 

That's a really good point. I'm £785 in credit but that's only because my last review was done September and that's the amount I've paid since then. I know I've used a bit less than that because I keep an eye on my monthly kWh usage and do some rough sums. Don't rely on the £ used on the in-house display because they don't always tally exactly with the unit costs, better to note the kWh.

I have just had a look in my account and it will allow me to reduce my direct debit by up to 20%, I don't know if that's the same for every EDF customer or if it's based on what they know about me.

Also, my experience with EDF is they will issue refunds if you are too much in credit at the six monthly review. So OP, your Dad shouldn't just continue getting thousands of pounds in credit while not being able to buy food.