Im paying £400pm with British Gas :(

GloriaShaw85

There is my husband and myself and our toddler. We live in a small semi detached, and have been paying £300-400pm with british gas. A smart meter was installed 6 months into our tenancy (we’ve now been here for 2 years), and despite rarely having the heating hot (because we all feel hot most of the time, and because the underfloor heating stays hot for ages if it’s on so we avoid putting it on as we can’t understand it). I’ve constantly chatted online to them explaining there has to be an error because the high cost is largely due to the gas being high (the electricity side is always less than the gas). They always tell me it can’t be wrong as a smart meter gives the readings. 

I finally had the opportunity to talk to someone who has arranged to send an engineer to look at things tomorrow morning. 

Meantime, I’ve received an email saying “ your current HomeEnergy Secure Dec 2023 tariff comes to an end on 31st December 2023. On 1st January 2024, we'll move you to our Standard Variable tariff” without giving much information as to what that means. Is this a good thing or does it make no difference? Should we change our tariff anyway?

markin

How long is it on for and what set temp, what is the actual temp, is it over shooting as its slow to react? Heating Flow temp set to?

Give us all your gas reading from the bills. With Estimated or smart?

MikeJXE

I can't tell you if it's a good thing or not if I don't know the rates

If what you were on before was a fix for 2 years that would likely be low and your new rates could be double or more

If I was paying anything like that I would go mad

You need to get yourself organised and in the habit of reading meters regularly 

Take meter readings every month or better still weekly, work out what kWh you are using and the cost 

Take the readings from the meters not the in home display 

QrizB

MikeJXE said:

If what you were on before was a fix for 2 years that would likely be low and your new rates could be double or more

Or the OP might've fixed at the top of the market, and their new tariff might be half the price of the old one.

We need to know the tariff and their actual energy consumption per week/month/year before we can say anything useful about the bill.

Robin9

Check that your bill has the right meter details following the change. Your Smart meter reads in m3: does your bill show the readings as ft3

Krakkkers

The OP say they feel hot all the time and they don't understand the underfloor heating.
That rings alarm bells, also talking in £ not kwh.

markin

It seems you were/are a high Electric user too at around 5,500 - 7,000kwh.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6446001/energy-bills-are-so-high-and-always-coming-through-british-gas/p1

GloriaShaw85

How do I find out the information you’ve asked? Just by looking at the bills? On the smart meter, where is the information?

electricity “could” be high, as I am disabled so spend a lot of time at home. I use the tv, laptop, wifi etc and we don’t have an oven so I microwave a lot. But the gas is confusing us, as we always have it off. 

When I said “we’re hot” I meant, generally, as people, we are hot people. I wear dresses without tights in winter. We used the underfloor heating last year and didn’t understand it. When we didn’t want it on, it took ages to not be hot so we just resigned to never use it, which we have adhered to. We don’t take long showers/baths, so such high gas is confusing us. 

Gerry1

If the underfloor heating is electric that's a huge red flag, leave it permanently off because it's FOUR times the cost of gas.  Similarly, don't use an instantaneous electric shower, use water heated by gas.

NEVER use any electric heating if you have gas, apart from kettles, electric blankets and electric throws.

markin

What are the latest readings for both, then we can work out your actual usage for the last 11 months and see if you have reduced usage without the floor heating.

30 jun 2022 - 05 oct 2022 248 units and 2789kwh

Your January readings.

Gas, 05 Jan, 01453 - 02293 April 16
Electric, 05 jan 04584  - 05774 April 

MultiFuelBurner

GloriaShaw85 said:

There is my husband and myself and our toddler. We live in a small semi detached, and have been paying £300-400pm with british gas. A smart meter was installed 6 months into our tenancy (we’ve now been here for 2 years), and despite rarely having the heating hot (because we all feel hot most of the time, and because the underfloor heating stays hot for ages if it’s on so we avoid putting it on as we can’t understand it). I’ve constantly chatted online to them explaining there has to be an error because the high cost is largely due to the gas being high (the electricity side is always less than the gas). They always tell me it can’t be wrong as a smart meter gives the readings. 

I finally had the opportunity to talk to someone who has arranged to send an engineer to look at things tomorrow morning. 

Meantime, I’ve received an email saying “ your current HomeEnergy Secure Dec 2023 tariff comes to an end on 31st December 2023. On 1st January 2024, we'll move you to our Standard Variable tariff” without giving much information as to what that means. Is this a good thing or does it make no difference? Should we change our tariff anyway?

In a previous post of yours where you had extraordinarily high electricity use despite using gas central heating (circa 70000 kWh of electricity) you were going to do an audit and the same people responding above told you what to do.

You never returned to that post.

In all honesty if you aren't willing to put some effort in then your bills will remain high. There is some great advice here in this forum so if you want lower bills the best thing to do is start replying to the questions asked and put some effort in