AIBU or is the Electricity Company?

[Fenchel]

Right! Got a bill which made me .
Maybe I'm being naive as this is my first go with all this but I found the bill/usage unbelievable. Please advise!

Here are the details:

-bill from 2 Nov - 8 Feb: £358.
-electricity only, no gas
-off peak tariff
-only use 2 storage heaters (charged offpeak) and 1 other radiator (stand heater) but have been modest in use
-3 people in small flat (with about 3 weeks when no one was here and everything switched off)
-no powershowers, tumble dryers, etc, very little oven use and no baths
-dishwasher and washer used on off-peak, in total 5 times a week for both
-water heats off-peak

According to our bill we've used 4,095 units!! We're so careful!

Is this normal or is the bill unreasonable?

Thanks for your advice. This is really disheartening and financially it's a big deal for me. It's just been problem after problem with the utilities and I feel like such a fool for moving into this place. London isn't friendly to students.

Anyone you'd reccommend? Someone said Ecotricity had great customer service and was of course greener than others.

When I phoned they said that a storage heater would use 13 units a night.

Is this right?

Yep, student house. It's my flatmate's bedroom so I don't venture in there.

I would say 13 units is right for a storage heater per night.

A unit is a kilowatt hour so if you had a storage heater running for 6.5 hours and had a rating of 2 kilowatt that woud be 13 units.

It isn't a case of what people can recommend - get on Uswitch, as it is different for everyone. You will want an online tariff usually, as they are usually much much cheaper.

Bear in mind that an economy 7 tarriff means you are paying much more than others for your daytime electricity, but if you are using it mostly at night, that is good.

Get one of those elctricity monitors (a lot of companies are sending them out for free now - I know that Eon and Npower definitely are) and use it to see when your usage spikes.

An average bill for gas and electricity (and remember electric heating is more expensive than gas) is about £100 a month, more for bigger households.

We pay £179 a month for gas and electricity for two adults and two under fives in a semi in the NE next to a field (so the windchill makes us very cold)

Also, Scottish and Southern are usually one of the more expensive ones. I know when I worked selling utilities I perked up when I heard the customer was with them as we could usually do a good deal.

We are on southern electric, have no gas in the village, small two bedroom mid terrace house family of 4 (2 adults, 2 children (aged 2 and 5), we have storage heaters (economy 7 as is the hot water), we normally only use the one but through the very cold weather on December and early Jan we used 2. We don't have a dishwasher, electric shower or tumble dryer. We pre pay our electric and through the winter normally use about £20 a week, it was about £25 a week with the extra storage heater on so our quarterly bill would come in under what you have however when we run an electric oil heater this eats up the power so if your room mate had one it very well maybe this that has pushed up the bill.
I would follow the advice given about checking daily usage, maybe explain to southern electric that there was a problem with the meter when you first moved in and you are worried it may still be faulty, they may send someone out to check it but may also charge you if there is no fault found.

I have 1 night storage heater.

I have not got a February bill yet, so going back though a few years...

2-Nov-09 to 31-Jan-10 I used 1535 Eco7 units.

15-Nov-08 to 18-Feb-09 I used 1789 Eco7 units.

So I think 13 units may be a bit on the low side... around 16 units may be more realistic, though it will obviously depend on the individual night storage heaters, they do vary in size and wattage.

Hot water heating is the other big cost. I personally turn my off most of the time, as dishwasher, washing machine and shower all heat their own. A bath costs money and needs prior planning so there is hot water.
If the hot water is heating a tank full of water every night, then that will cost quite a bit. I've got a very new tank (fitted last year) and it gets cold by the following evening... so with the hot water heating on, it would be reheating the entire tank each time in my view.

Something to add, my Timer (an old mechanical one which Southern Electric won't replace) uses around 120 Eco7 units per quarter. I know this, as I can switch off the Eco7 circuits during the summer and the meter still accumulates units.

I doubt the new digital timers do that but if there is a timeclock (it's a large lump of a thing so you won't miss seeing it) then it will use some units to operate it.

I use British Gas much prefer them, there are comparison sites online.

Get hot water bottles, don't have the heating on whlist you are sleeping it is pointless.

Sounds right - our bill is about that (we have two storage heaters and one other heater in a two-bed flat).

Storage heaters suck. Mini-moan that the council put gas central heating in all the flats in the block that they own (8 out of ten) which we can't afford to put in our flat.

As everyone has said storage heaters are hugely expensive to run.

My heating is gas so my electric bill is just lights, appliances and some electric underfloor heating in the kitchen. Bill is £70 pcm.

Thank you, everyone, for your advice and help. I'll try and persuade the flatmates to switch to another provider.

Of course, our hot water bottles are our best friends come bedtime! We have to have the heating 'on' at night because they store the energy at that time. Even if it's low it's still on.

Storage heaters are frighteningly expensive and crap. We moved into a rented house and froze for the first 3 months, thinking that at least the electricity bill wouldn't be high. It was over £300 for 2 months, and that was 14 years ago. I remind myself of that every time I'm tempted to whinge about the gas bill.