Fridge freezer costing £20 per day to run?

[Buttonsluna]

Hi there ,

We have just realised our standard size Liebherr fridge freezer is costing us over £7,000 a year to run . Obviously we’ve unplugged it and bought a new one (arriving today), but do you think I can get compensation from the company?

It took us a whole quarterly bill period to realise it‘s been using over 100 KWH per 24 hours. Our bills went up dramatically before that, but we put it down to both WFH.

Basically we now owe thousands of pounds we can’t afford (I feel sick and I’m having panic attack about how we’re going to pay).

As soon as we realised there was a problem when submitting our meter read, we bought a plug to check how much electricity each appliance is using. We were shocked that our Liebherr FF cost £23.50 over a 24 hour period!!!

We purchased it from John Lewis 10 years ago. Is there any recourse for compensation or do we have to suck it up? Is this just what happens when FF break down- is it normal? It seemed to be functioning ok, everything cold/ frozen and no frost or anything.

If you have any ideas please help. We acted as soon as we realised there is a problem so please don’t tell me I’m stupid for not noticing, I am busy working mum and struggle as it is to keep up with all life admin. Obviously I’m checking meter constantly now.

In our old flat we had a sudden increase in electricity costs and I happened to notice our table top fridge was getting very hot. We sent it back and got a replacement and the bills went back to normal. The electricity company said we couldn’t claim back the used electricity due to a faulty appliance. It was about £200 in the space of one month in summer when bills are usually small. We always pay exactly what we owe per month so we noticed after the first month of the fault however I can imagine that people paying equal monthly direct debits could easily get caught out with a mammoth adjustment bill at the end of the year.

When I say “hot” I mean to touch, on the outside. Inside was cold as usual.

I make it about £170 since your last reading.

Both electricity readings on that bill are estimated. What are the correct readings and what cost does that work out at?

I'm pretty sure it's possible to have an immersion heater on a timer.

It can be switched on/off so surely it's possible?

On the bill you uploaded, it is for 5 months of electricity. With your new reading it would be approx £150 for the month plus the standing charge if units are charged at £0.21 per unit.

Is the 1st Oct reading on that bill 42124? It's really hard to see. If so then it looks as though you have used 1024 units since then. which equates to about £145 per month.

Here is AO.com's returns policy, @Buttonsluna. You have 100 days to return the fridge freezer for a full refund but you must not unpack or install it. If it has been opened or installed, you will only get a partial refund.

That gives you time to think.

ao.com/help-and-advice/delivery-and-services/returns

Tbh I don't understand your posts, I'm sure that's because you aren't thinking straight at the moment.

You've given us a reading, come back in a few hours or tomorrow and update.

You've also had a massive increase in your unit price, of course everything is going to have gone up by 75%, don't make it worse but wasting money on a new freezer that you don't need

Sorry, I got that wrong, you can unpack it, just not use it.

Are you sure that you've calculated correctly, or have they estimated your bill correctly? SSE is our supplier, we've been on standard variable rate, was about 17p has gone up to 20p. We pay £55/month up from £49. I argued the case to remain at £49 last year when they wanted to put us ip to £54. as our bill has always been in redit for at least the amount of the quarterly bill.
This bill was an estimate, I've let it go through as the rate went up mid-bill - meaning 2/3 of this bill is still at 17p/unit, 1/3 20p - so I don't mind overpaying 2/3 at the cheaper rate as I cannot see electricity prices reducing for at least 2 bills worth, but they've effectively estimated a 22% increase on usage since last year, which was less than the year before (we've replaced a couple of items that use less) Obviously 22% of a more expensive bill than ours would be quite a lot of money.

When you moved in did you submit a meter reading ? And you're not paying previous occupant past arrears?

Right. So you've calculated your electricity usage completely incorrectly. And rather than try and work out where you went wrong you've spend £300? on a new fridge freezer

Send the new fridge back. Spend the money on getting your boiler to heat your tank.

And next time you get panicked about bills, ask someone else to check for you rather than leaping into panic mode and spending money you dont have.

Yes @Chemenger that’s right. Nowhere near as bad as I thought.

My DH has just checked the monitor plug and @BarbaraofSeville is right I put cost in as £20 not 20p .

I’m just going to give up now as clearly I’m making this worse and getting into a ‘tis

Just adding my thoughts
I think you'd benefit by buying a new combi boiler to control heating and hot water together
You can get a mid range boiler on a finance plan for £40 pcm

Looks like your last own reading on 6th Oct was 42339
Today's reading is 43148
Used 809 units @ 21p
= £169.89 (not including standing charge)

@Buttonsluna

Yes *@Chemenger* that’s right. Nowhere near as bad as I thought.

My DH has just checked the monitor plug and @BarbaraofSeville is right I put cost in as £20 not 20p .

I’m just going to give up now as clearly I’m making this worse and getting into a ‘tis

In the nicest possible way OP maybe leave the maths to someone else in the future 😂 You must be relieved it isn't as bad as you thought though, and as other posters have said, send the new fridge back.

Glad it's sorted. Phew - what a relief! No need for a new fridge and your bill is much lower than you thought. I've made daft mistakes with Maths before - most people have, otherwise we'd all be getting A* in Maths GCSE

And 39 days (7 oct until today) at 19.21p per day is about £7.50

I teach engineering students, it's not at all unusual for them to be a factor of 10, 100 or even a 1000 out on calculations, and they spend their lives doing maths. That's why I am good at sanity checks!

When I moved into my current house I left the immersiona heater on. Not 24/7 but for a fair proportion of the day so I always had hot water.

End result was that our electricity bills were phenomenal. Hundreds and hundreds of pounds. I had to take extreme measures to reduce our electricity use for a year to clear what we owed.

Now the immersion gets put on for an hour max each day. And if it goes on in the evening, then the next day it doesn't go on at all.

Thanks everyone- you’ve made me realise I’m crap at maths (knew that anyway) and also generally stressed/ sleep deprived (toddler has spent weeks coughing/crying through night due to Pneumonia).

Our electricity use is still very high, so we need to get to bottom of it.

Our last two homes had a combi boiler and it was brilliant, so good to know that we could get it on finance. It would certainly pay for itself if we’re spending £160 ish on electricity pcm and it is the immersion causing that (I’m still not sure it is though).

The other cause could be an electrical leak in broken wiring. We only had 60% of house rewired, so this will need checking with the theoretical money I’ve saved today!

Thanks all. I’ll update when I know more after investigating.

@CantHaveTooMuchChocolate

Oh and if you ordered the new FF online, then you I believe you can send it back unused within a certain timeframe www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/changed-your-mind/changing-your-mind-about-something-youve-bought/

I’d call AO now though and have it returned before it’s delivered personally.

THIS THIS THIS! Do not accept delivery of the new fridge

There's probably a few reasons why your bill is still higher than you'd expected - the immersion on constantly won't help (it really won't be cheaper than intermittent), but it is just more expensive to heat your water this way than using gas. You don't necessarily need a combi boiler though, it might be possible to replumb the current one to heat the water tank too.

But the main factor is the price increases per unit - you've gone from paying 12p to 21p. That's a massive increase! Electricity costing £150 a month now would only have been about £85 before. Unfortunately we're all going to have to suck this up for now

@titchy

The gadget showing 100 watts is about right. But 100 watts doesn't cost what you seem to think it does. 100 watts is 0.1 of a kilowatt. At 18p per kilowatt hour, the fridge costs 0.18 x 0.1 x 24 = 43p a day!

So send the new one back.

And use the money to get your immersion heated from the boiler.

Absolutely this. Why on earth your gas boiler isn't wired to provide hot water as well as hot radiators is beyond me!

The other cause could be an electrical leak in broken wiring. We only had 60% of house rewired, so this will need checking with the theoretical money I’ve saved today!

I'm no electrician but I'm pretty sure that an electrical leak isn't a thing