Does this bill seem really high?

[talkingkrustydoll]

I live in a three bed split level (has an upstairs and downstairs) maisonette and up until last year I was paying the gas and electric by key card costing me about £90 a month.

I switched in September to Edf on a pay monthly plan gave my initial readings and they were charging me £60 a month. They have no told me that they incorrectly entered the first reading as being 0 on my electric and are now saying I need to pay £370 a month and ow them £150. There is no way I can afford this as after my bills I have £400 to spend on everything including food for me and my three children. Does this sound a lot to anyone else? I just don't know what to do. I've been sending in monthly readings but my bill still says that it's estimated so I just don't understand it all.

So you owe them £150. Can you ask how long you have to pay this over. It’s probably some computer algorithm that’s worked out a ridiculous monthly payment. Have you spoken to a person on the phone, asking how your usage can have suddenly gone up by over £200 per month?

Do you still have all of your readings? It's not a quick solution but you can calculate your usage then the cost will be the usage multiplied by the charge per kWh.
Unless I'm misreading it what they are saying doesn't make sense. If they entered your initial reading as zero you should have been charged more not less than your usage.

You need to speak to them and understand exactly how much the arrears are. I don't know about key card but assume it is a form of pre payment which is more expensive?

I also suspect that as you have been with them a year you may be reverting back to their standard variable tariff? Normally now would be the time t move supplier again but clearly you have to deal with your arrears. In any event it sounds a hell of an increase allowing for all of that.

If I don't change my tariff at the end of each contract I find it increases by about £500 per year so I always change ahead of contract end.

Also...companies are useless at taking meter readings if you don't have a smart meter. My smart meter went "dumb" as I changed supplier and I have to now supply the readings but they are not bothered if I don't send them in

£60 a month sounds too low for combined gas and electric. Do you mean you owe £1500 rather than £150? EDF don't produce bills each month even if you send in readings (they used to and now only produce them every 6 months I think). I would make a complaint and tell them you can't afford the payments they are suggesting, especially as its their error.

P.s . I currently pay £110 for combined gas/ electric for a 4 bed in scotland (was £127 but ended up in credit)

I switched to Octopus from edf and they ask for a monthly reading and then produce a statement so you know exactly what you have used each month.

If the £90 you paid covered the G&E that you used, then you should now be paying slightly less as direct debit is cheaper than key meters. £60 pm is probably too low though, but having to pay £370 pm is far too much if your arrears are only £150.

However, at the end of the summer, you would expect to be slightly in credit as you will use it up over autumn and winter.

£150 arrears after a year of spending £60 pm seems reasonable, but £370 pm to catch up certainly does not. Can you work through your bills to see what they should have been charging - is this 0 reading shown on your bills? If it was, your first bill should have been ludicrously high unless your meter is new, because it would have been for many years of use since the meter was installed.

Sounds like some more investigation of your bills for the last year is needed as you need to find your correct changeover reading, either because it will be shown on a bill somewhere, or if not, you need to agree a best guess based on your usage over the last year.

But I can't for the life of me work out why utility companies are so bad at billing. None of them seem capable of producing accurate bills or using the information presented to them. I always submit my readings as requested, but my bills are estimated half the time. The same when the meter reader came a few weeks ago - nowhere has the numbers he took appeared on a bill since.

If you owe them £150 over the course of a year due to this error then that's £12.50 a month you've been underpaying. So your new monthly payment should be £72.50.

I'm not sure where £370 comes from though!

I don't think you have to worry about arrears if its their mistake and you've provided regular meter readings. It might be worth raising a complaint and speaking to the ombudsmen.

You've done everything you needed to, it's EDF that have made the mistake.

But I can't for the life of me work out why utility companies are so bad at billing. None of them seem capable of producing accurate bills or using the information presented to them

My shambles of a provider has sent me a yearly bill for £3800. The meter readings they are using were the originals we provided 4 years ago (not the actual ones we provide every month) so they are trying to recharge us for energy we have already paid for.

Sorry that was meant to say I ow £1000 not £100

Also they took the first reading as 0 so when I wrote in the numbers the next time it looked like i had used years and years worth of energy so that's why.

If you owe them £1000 after paying them £720 in a year, that puts rather a different spin on the matter. That means that your 'true' bill for the year is £1720, which is quite a lot above the annual average of around £1100 and they say you have used around double the amount that you did in the previous year.

Do you think that is possible? Have you been very generous/careless with the heating, hot water and tumble dryer over the last year? Remember that I think the 2019/20 winter was very mild and we've had quite a hot spring period. Could there have been an immersion heater or other heat source left on for an extended period?

Again, you need to check your bills carefully to see whether this amount seems reasonable, because unless your usage has changed dramatically since the previous year, then your bills should be a similar amount.

Or has there been a debt carried over (unlikely, I wouldn't have thought they'd allow you to move to a credit account if you were madly in arrears on prepay). You haven't been using a lot more heating because you've not had to keep feeding the prepay account with actual money as you went along did you?

Writing your first reading as 0 would have made your payments much higher after the second reading so that makes no sense.
£60 a month seems extremely low, we pay £90 a month for a 2 bed, out all day.

@talkingkrustydoll

Also they took the first reading as 0 so when I wrote in the numbers the next time it looked like i had used years and years worth of energy so that's why.

So it is clear that there's an error. You need to challenge them on this and get them to reduce it to a more realistic level.

Writing your first reading as 0 would have made your payments much higher after the second reading so that makes no sense

Some companies only review payment levels annually, although there's certainly been an oversight on this occasion because neither the company or the OP has done anything about an obvious error leading to a very large deficit for a year.

Edf only bills every 6 months even if you send monthly readings. Its one of the reasons i left them. They try to get you down to a zero balance figure by the end of the annual billing period which is probably what the 0 reading is that they are talking about i.e. £0 owed. They used to refund my credit balance and then put my direct debit up to compensate!

Make a complaint, tell them you want to pay your arrears over a longer period. Take all your meter readings and submit as evidence too.

I have a smart meter and despite having had actual bills for six months, last month they sent me an 'estimated' bill. I rang them up and they were completely unable to tell me why the bill had been estimated (they could tell my smart meter was working) or why they had estimated it at 25% higher than my previous summer bills.

I don't think they know their arse from their elbow, to be honest. And I frequently suspect that they pluck a number out of the air at random to charge you.

Can you get a smart meter fitted? At least then you'd have a vague idea of what the bill shoud be and how your useage fluctuates. I always said I would die rather than have one, but my house came with one fitted and it helps in any argument if you can actually SEE what you are using, rather than being bamboozled by the energy company.

You need to challenge this in writing, presumably you do have the correct reading from when you switched over?

You can also go to OFGEM. Make it clear that you are disputing the original reading and they have made an error and the correct meter reading is xxxxxx.

Ask for them to respond immediately and chase up.

Sadly I don't as they said they would sort it when they changed the machine to work as a pay monthly one. There is no problem with my gas bill as I don't really use it. Nearly all of that bill is electricity. As in my gas bill for the 6months was £22.

Ignore that it was £99 for gas

As you can tell reading numbers is not my strong point.

Not sure I agree that £60 is too low? I pay £64 for gas and electricity and I regularly send my meter readings. I think that's with EDF too (first day back and all a blur). 3 bed semi. Now thinking I am tight with heating etc .

OP, call them. Ask them to explain it back to you as it doesn't make sense.

Did you get any paperwork??

How do you know the meter reading wasn't zero?

I would get in touch with OFGEM and ask for their help tbh.

It was a rookie mistake not to take a reading unfortunately.