Hideously high gas and electric bills

[TheSnowFairy]

OMG. Nearly £800 in total (for both together) Dec - March.

Family of 5, in SE England (so been cold, had heating on a lot, but low - so pipes didn't freeze).

AIBU to be ?

XX I know, and we do use a lot around the house.

Just looked on MSE but don't recognise any of the names they have suggested - Outfox the Market? Breeze? Tonik?

I was caught out last year and paying still now so have not had central heating on at all throughout the winter (my business folded in December and hardly any money coming in). We have a little electric fire for the living room which warms up lovely and then freeze the rest of the house.

I have had a cough for 9 weeks that is not getting better but the alternative is an £800 bill.

Omg im a lone parent on a low income and i'd be stuffed with those bills...i pay 52 a month for electric and 36 a month for heating oil...i keep my electric bill low by not heating water...i have an electric shower and a dishwasher so really dont need extra hot water and it saves me a fortune.

Our gas From December 30th - today £298 and a few pence. Our electric from Feb - today £129.

We spend a huge amount all year round infact that electric is low for us and we just got £120 credit refund. No idea how we managed that at one point out electric DD was £150pcm.

Biomass boiler user here.
I spend about £150 a month for a four bedroom house when it's really really cold and less than £50 when it's very warm...
Less than £1000 a year - probs less than £900
There's electricity on top but that's not too bad - I do have two wood burners but that doesn't add too much
I think I am quite extravagant with the heating but my bills are much better than when I had a rubbish oil boiler and the hot water is actually hot!
I absolutely LOVE my biomass boiler....

Are you sure they're not estimated?

British Gas have just over-estimated ours and said we owed them £1,700, which would have worried us but they do this to us ever six months or so.

We took our own readings and rang them back and now we're £289 in credit on the account.

So they've basically got the estimate wrong by £2,000. Again.

The last time their meter reader claimed to have been in the house when he hadn't, made an estimate, and they claimed owed £1,000's when we didn't.

We're looking into changing suppliers now.

The one time we really did owe them a lot more than we thought was just after we moved and we had storage heaters in the hallways. We didn't know how to work them and they are really expensive to run.

Can you read the meter yourself or get them to send someone to check it?

2 bed place, modern windows so improved the draughts greatly - I pay 56 quid a month for gas and power combined.

Have a Hive thermostat so I can make sure we never waste heating by having it on when not there or not needed (although put it in remotely when it was really cold for the cat ).
I like to stay in the top 40pc for energy saving at least (it rates you against your peers)

Also submit monthly readings on the app. I am with OVO and it shows you how your usage compares to other properties the same size.

Am surprised so many people seem to be on quarterly billing - surely a monthly direct debit would be easier to manage?

YANBU. We have been paying £155 a month for gas and electric for the past few months. Had a bill come through online saying we are somehow £390 in debit and now they want us to pay more to get out of debit! We are on smart meters in a 2 bed semi. I want to switch but we can't with such high debit. We've never paid more than £110-ish a month during winter and have never ran up so much debt so I don't understand what's happened. We can't have increased our usage by that much though surely.

Dp is supposed to ring them, they won't speak to me because it's in his name. We really can't afford to pay much more though, we're going to look at ways to reduce what we use too. It's a pain.

@hygge no, read v recently and DH even double checked as he was shocked at the bill.

@mojomoon we are on DD - a quarter is low so they don't take much (previous gas - £90, previous electric £175), then the bill rockets (gas now £450, electric £320) and payments are adjusted.

FFS that gas hike is horrendous

Electric showers are massively expensive to run. We moved from a house with a Combi boiler to one without and our electric bill shot up. It's not the immersion as I won't put it on as that's too expensive, so that leaves the shower as the main culprit.

We just switched from utilita (160 per month for gas and electricity) to bulb and now we're paying £84 per month for both! It pays to shop around. If anyone on here wants to switch to bulb I can give you my referral code which will get us a £50 credit each

Run your usage through a comparison calculator, like USwitch.

Check your tariff, and see if you've dropped to the basic prices - we ran out the 2 year fixed plan and the cost doubled. My fault, I'm usually on top of that and switch in time.

We've used less gas & electric this year than last. Because my mother hasn't been to visit. 😂

loft and cavity wall insulation is offered by most of the energy companies it maybe worth getting a survey done by them on your home.

Difficult to compare without the other 3 quarters too. If you 'pay as you use' rather than a fixed monthly amount, then presumably this will be balanced out by not having any heating between May and October though ?
Also, does your dh work in one room (as in his 'office') ? I work at home quite a lot and have a little heater that costs a few pence per hour, and heats that room beautifully. No need to heat the whole house throughout the day. (That and wear warm layers).
It does make a big difference to change providers each year though.

Do you not pay monthly spread over the year then?

We're often a bit in debt this time of year, but we're well in credit by the end of summer.

Get an oil heater, so that when your DH is working from home he can just warm up the room he's working in. That's what I do when I'm at home and it's really helped our bills. I've been working from home for the last 6 months and our bills are nowhere near that high. Were in a 3 bed semi with questionable double glazing.

😱 I’ve been keeping a close eye on mine with a Smart meter. We pay £60 a month electric and £50 gas throughout the year. Ours is a town house, we’re in credit. From Dec till now our bill is under £300. Heating has been on a fair amount. I do use eco programmme on the dishwasher though, washing done at 30, hot water is banned at being on constant (I get really shouty about it because it’s a horrendous waste of gas).

We've gone up to about £7 a day for G and E in the coldest winter days, averaging around £5 a day, so I expect our bill for that period to be similar - between £700 and £800, for a family of four (DD1 away at uni) in a thirties 3 bed semi, with condensing combi boiler, DG, loft and CWI. Thermostat set to 18° day, 10° at night. We've had the electric underblanket on eco setting on the coldest nights.

It costs a lot to keep warm.