My gas & electric costs is crippling me.

[ColinRobinsonsfamiliar]

I know it’s the same for everyone.
Its gone from £180 per month for both to £490 per month.
3 bedroom semi.
This is more than our mortgage.

I’m planning on seeing how the bills are until January then will reassess the monthly payments.
We have stopped using the dryer, turned heating down, switching off switches, filling a bloody flask with hot water instead of boiling the kettle, only doing one laundry load every other day, drying on the radiators.
Trying to pick up extra shifts.

I don’t know how long we can keep our heads above water.

Is this it now? Is this life for ever?

You’re either being overcharged or are using more than you think as that is really high. For comparison we live in a 4 bed semi and are currently using £120 per month with no heating on. We are on a smart meter so it’s accurate.

If you can't change the DD online call them. They can help over the phone.

Before calling, you need to know your annual kWh usage. You can use this to calculate a monthly amount that would cover it. Don't forget to include the standing chafed and VAT in your calculation.

When we're you last billed? Seeing the amount in credit without knowing when you were last billed won't really help. Some of that "credit" may well have been used just not billed yet.

With my supplier every 6 months they check the credit balance and you can claim a refund. This happens just after the bill.

This will cost more per unit and as a daily charge though.

Getting a proper handle and understanding of how much is used and what the unit and standing charge rates are should always be the first step.

Bulb will show you your annual usage on one of your recent statements. That'd be useful to know. We can work our if the amount quoted is about right. If it is, then we can look after your usage in final detail and see if we can make any suggestions for cutting back.

Bulb gave us an estimate for DD, but on our online account there's a minimum we can change it to.

Even if OP is in North and has heating on, it can't possibly be for that long as not that cold yet, unless it's turned up very high.

I'm with bulb. Go into your account and adjust your DD amount. You'll see if you've got credit in your account too. It says in there the minimum amount you can adjust it down to. £490 is a ridiculous amount. When you say though that you've adjusted your heating....what does that mean? Do you have it on a lot but just at a lower temp? Like most others, you'll have to use your heating a lot less and find others ways to stay warm.

If you're only £350 in credit going into winter then it's unlikely you're being overcharged in that sense, and everyone is pretty much on the same tariff now so it's also unlikely you are being charged more than other people.

What do the KWH figures say on your bill? How much are you using a month/a day?

You really should be able to adjust your DD. With Octopus you can. I'd dispute that minimum payment figure with them strongly. You should also be getting 70 a month reduction from government, I noticed my bill was reduced by that amount this month.

DH just adjusted our (lekki only) payment (with Bulb) down to £7.15/month. He could do that easily online with Bulb. Said £7 was the minimum. We have about £200 in credit & the payment was £70/month, but the govt is giving everyone £67/month, so £7 should cover us fine.

We have solar panels but they can't reduce our bills more than 20%/month. Our most demanding items are kettle, microwave, wash machine & cooker. I'm baffled at OP's numbers... how much £ is gas, how much £ is electricity?

Smart meter in-home displays can have the wrong tariffs. Mine still has a tariff from before all this kicked off, so my figures on the display are totally out of whack. Use the KwH figures, not £ figures the display says.

Good luck with bulb, 2yrs ago they wanted to change my payment to £290pm, told them this was unaffordable and I couldn’t pay that, response was we can’t do anything other than refer you to a debt charity! No leeway whatsoever, I left them to go with sse and my monthly bill was £120!

must say though to all those astonished with peoples high bills- we are very conscious of our use, use airier, only try to use tumble for bedding/towels, no heating since feb, all plugs off when not in use etc, no hot tub or anything power hungry and our monthly usuage is still £240!! That’s a 2 bed!
i conclude our home is just extremely poorly insulated.

@ColinRobinsonsfamiliar I'm with bulb too and have had no issues with my bills rising intact they have reduced them quite significantly. So would definitely check what they predict your usage to be.

I messaged them while back as was looking to just pay for my useage each month (I didn’t do it in the end) and they do give you the information to do that, I think it was an online chat.

Go on your Bulb account and look at your yearly usage.

Report back.

I’m with Bulb in a much larger, cold house and my DD is nowhere near what you’re paying. We also have an electric car.

I’ve always found Bulb helpful so I think there’s an issue with your meter, your usage or your account.

Yearly usage - come tell us what your account says.

I’ve even turned the water temp right down on the combi boiler to see if that makes any difference and I use economy wash for laundry

Look at your bills for the last 12 months and calculate your actual usage and cost. The direct debit figure is just what they want you to pay and will always be a comfortable buffer for them. Whatever you paid last year, you shouldn’t be paying much more than double now at most with the new cap on cost per unit.

You can cancel the direct debit and just pay every month for the energy you actually use. We only pay around £70 a month in the summer but probably 3 times that when it’s midwinter and the heating is on.

We’ve found having a smart meter invaluable for keeping an eye on the cost of things and it gives readings for right now, daily, weekly and monthly costs.

we have discovered that boiling the keto is fine because it’s so quick but leaving things like laptops on charge when they don’t need to be is silly. It’s changed our habits for the better.

i hope you can sort it out anyway.

We are in London too. In a smaller detached house and our house has been between 15 and 18 since the end of September. I think your house retains heat better than you realise!

More or Lara's the same situation as me. I was quoted £220 per month direct debit, but my ACTUAL usage at the moment is about £66. I paid the £220 as I didn't understand I had any pet option at the time but am now over £1000 in credit. My current use age is £3-£4 per day, hearing on 20* 8am - 8pm and thermostat lowered for periods when out of house for a few hours, or walking the dog.

We got advised by our energy company to raise our dd from just under £300 (already double what we paid last year) to nearly £500.

When I logged on to look at our usage I found out that we were nearly £1200 in credit! There is no way that we are going to up our dd as requested - it's literally us lending the energy company money! As others have said find out what you are actually using as a first step.

More or less

Oh and I also did an online affordability thing through bulb when they wanted to put my bills up at the start of all this. You put quite a bit of financial data outgoings etc and then it sort of capped what they could put it up to as such. I think it came out about £120 and that’s what I paid and I have loads of credit built up (over £400 - I put that £150 grant we got in in the summer) I’ve just screen grabbed so hopefully you can find it

Ok, assuming they're doing to you what they did to me, which was estimate my readings by sitting on an calculator and then assume I would be running a small bitcoin farm starting next month, you need to do the following:

1. Take photos of your meter so they know you're not making it up.
2. Download your bills and, using actual readings not estimated, come up with a reasonable figure for what you think you should be paying.
3. Send them a message through the website with your photos attached explaining your maths.
4. If you're feeling nuclear explain that if they aren't able to help you will need to switch to quarterly billing and just pay what you use.

After I did all this they not only reduced my monthly payment to something sensible but also stopped randomly increasing it. This was back in June.

What really pissed me off about the whole experience was that they would always calculated a new figure just in time to catch the next direct debit payment but very slightly too late for me to amend it. It is scammy behaviour from a company which has already gone bust, I assume the people making decisions there are so run down by the situation they've lost all sense of professionalism and self respect.

Direct debits are a scam, as far as I can see. Companies just put them up and then have that money in their accounts, regardless of how much you're actually using.

We've always paid quarterly and kept savings to pay the winter bill. I appreciate it's better to know how much the DD will be, but if companies can put them up without warning you don't have that security.

We have a much larger house than this. I am trying to ensure our bills don’t hit £500 a month! The average per month in the 2021 price hike is around £280. We are soon to come off a fixed rate but I am adjusting now as it will be harder in November to back track.

I am hardly having the heating on yet apart from in dd’s bedroom if needed as her room is the coldest. I’ve bought some little tiny 500w plug ins with a view to just heat upstairs for dh and me before bed rather than heating the whole upstairs.

I have never heated places like the entrance hall and my dressing room etc. We have an open fire in the living room and plenty of wood. So again I hardly heat the living room. Dh often complains of being cold in the winter but will never wear layers so I’ve bought blankets and a fleece jacket for him. I’ve also reduced the amount of time the water is heated.

What rate are you on? This happened to my friend and Scottish power had her on a fixed rate more than double the cap. She's a single mum.

I thought the cap has roughly doubled since last winter? So it should be more like £360?

my supplier (shell) doesn’t seem to be taking the £400 discount into consideration when setting the DD either. If your use is comparable to last year, and you weren’t on a really good fixed deal, then I would think £327 is closer to what you need to pay. Admittedly still a big increase but not as bad as £490

They can't put them up without warning. They have to warn you before.

You can speak to them and change it.

People just need to have a grip on their usage and tariff so they know what the direct debit needs to be set at.

Paying quarterly costs more in standing charge and unit prices, so it's a terrible way to "save" money.