My energy bill increased 200% in 3 months.

[Sleepdeprived42long]

I’m trying to budget ahead for the proposed energy price increases. We were on a fixed rate which ended in January and I moved onto standard rate. We were paying £115pm pre Feb and had no large debit on account at end Jan. My supplier then increased the direct debit to £227pm for Feb and March but have said prices will increase at 1 April. I understand the price cap will raise prices by around 50% which will take my direct debit up to around £340. That’s 3 times what I was paying in January! I knew prices were going up but 200% seems completely mad! And goodness knows how much further it’ll go up in October!

Anyone else seeing their bills going up by this much or have we just been unlucky (or lucky to have had a good fix until January!)?

@cakeorwine

Yeps I know, I already switch off everything etc I got a device from Amazon which shows how much I used on what appliances etc did that in December last year, and have been looking at other ways.

There is no way I can reduce any further 🤷‍♀️

We can’t afford the 1k for heating oil which also does our hot water…we are going to have to use the electric shower which is going to throw us into further debt

What am I supposed to do?

I charge my phone/laptop at work! Only thing on in the house between 8.10am and 4.30pm is the fridge, wifi router and ring alarm, I even switch the oven off!

I’m honestly baffled at what more I can do 🤷‍♀️

My fixed tariff ends on 31st March. So my rates will approximately double as I'm on a lower rate than last April's offgem SVR. I"m in an annual payment plan which finishes in Oct. I think I will have paid for all my winter energy by end March when my tariff increases. My plan is to pay the £150 rates refund to my energy account and hope to continue with my current payment till October.

This is what I'm angry about:

There have been nearly 30 privatised energy companies who've failed and the underfunded or unpaid levies to protect consumers are being met by the SOLR and recouped by increasing the standing charge. Why am I having to subsidise private companies failures

It's reasonable to say that once tariffs end most peoples bills will have doubled and the VAT the Treasury gets double the income.

I have paid the increased direct debit that the electricity company suggested/insisted on charging us (standard tariff), which has gone up from £49 in October via £54 to £78 last month. I'm expecting another increase though. We received our quarterly bill in November as an estimate, which appears to be based on last year's same quarter usage of electricity + about 15%. We had enough 'cash in hand ' at the electricity company from the previous direct debits to pay the whole bill when it arrived and leave around £90 'cash in hand' held by the electricity company before the start of the next quarter.

So when the estimated bill for February arrived - this time it was based on the same quarter previous year + 18%! No idea why so much! , I decided to do something about it.

Obviously our direct debits once again cover the amount they estimated and a sum to be held as cash advance vs the May bill
I have calculated the amount of cash they're holding surplus to billed use and converted it to units of electricity - and submitted that as our actual meter reading. On the basis why should they hold the cash paid in advance for the entire bill plus about 50% (equating to well over £150 - this is in winter so it'll only get worse over the summer as the amount paid in hand will increase above the £300 mark ) for them to hold it as 'cash held vs future bills' - meaning that if the price increases our cash buys less. By submitting a meter reading reflecting their demand for cash up front & based on their calculations of what they think we should be paying, this means I'm effectively now paying for actual units in advance & at the cheaper pre-April increase rate.

We can't have a smart meter (no mobile signal where meter is).

I do agree with @bellabasset that it's annoying to be paying for other electricity company failures.

We didn't bother to fix our tariff as we don't pay a lot of electricity anyway & no gas, so it wasn't a lot of difference, and have paid the standard variable throughout, and we took the view that it seemed too good to be true and that at some point the payment advantage of fixing would be taken back by increased tariffs when deals ended and prices increased.

Seems to us to be very unfair that we're subsidising other companies, more so when you consider we didn't take advantage of fixing the rate, which is why we think it seems a bit much to complain about subsidising failed companies if you did take advantage of a fixed rate - your payback is now.

I think the first bit of advice is to read your meter on 31st March if you're on SVR , which I will be. Take a photo of your meter as proof of your reading and make sure to give it to the energy company.

I've been with BG for years switched to Sainsburys Energy under BG and then switched back when it was sold. I still had dial up when I first had an online account and put the meter readings in monthly. I had separate bills for each fuel. Sainsburys Energy took one payment and issued a bill every 6 months, which is what BG had set up when I returned. I have smart meters, and my beef at the moment is that for their own unfathomable reason my meters are read in the middle of the month and the calculations are behind, so you need to do a manual calculation. I guess this is due to the 700,000 customers who've been transferred to BG. No company would take over the 1.5 million customers with Bulb and the government are having to fund that.

I'm paying £460 a month for just electricity

How?! Mine is less than £5 a day for gas and electric