Energy bill £850 per month?!

[SunshinePie]

My energy bill for 5 bed house has gone up to £850 per month! I know prices have increased but this seems ridiculous! It was £300 before. I called British Gas to check and apparently it’s correct…AIBU to think this is crazy?

Even £300 before the price raises would have been crazy high, 3x typical usage. What’s your actual usage in kWh?

Thats your direct debit not your actual usage. Check your units that you use, look at previous bills to see if that is right or not

Our energy company often state on the bill what they estimate to be our annual usage and it's not far out. Check your usage and work out the cost based on new prices. That way, you'll get an idea of whether the amount stated is fair.

One thing that's worth checking is that your last meter usage was based on an actual read rather than estimate, as estimate could be larger than it actually is.

It does seem a massive increase, our company have calculated we should pay an extra 72%, but there's an option to pay slightly less. Do you have a large debit coming out of winter? If so, that's another reason they might be asking for more.

That sounds awful. Octopus wanted to put mine up from £214pm to £440 per month and we already had a credit balance at the end of the winter quarter.

I said the most I would accept is £350 and if they didn't agree I'd switch to actual use monthly billing. We are now paying £350 a month.

I'm not happy with an energy companies holding a large credit balance at the moment. It's easier not to let them have it than it is to get it back if more go under. I'm also not prepared to act as a bank and give them an interest free loan.

Ditto @Elphame

i would prefer me to put £275 into a superset account each month and then pay whatever the bills is

if they had £100 off every customer every month fir summer months think of all that interest

but apparently it’s cheaper to pay by dd

You used to get a discount for DD, but I'm not sure you do anymore and earning interest hasn't been a concern for a few years, although it might be going forward.

DD is less about being cheaper and more about ease of budgeting. Because if you pay as you go, you could be paying bills of £80 pm in the summer and £400 pm in the winter, which many people will struggle with, especially as coincides with Christmas, so might find it easier to pay £200 pm (or whatever) year round.

I don't know what I've done right, but Octopus don't seem particularly bothered about putting our DD up. We're currently £350 in debt and are paying £160 pm, despite our estimated monthly bill averaged over the year being more like £230.

Those of you who've been asked for massive DDs are filling the hole in their bank account that I'm contributing to. (Don't worry, I can cover the higher payments etc when they ask for them, it's just strange how they treat customers differently).

British Gas are an absolute shower of shit. My smart meter hasn’t been working for a while. I arranged someone to come out and look at it, took a day off work and lost pay and no one turned up. Turned out they’re “migrating systems” and any bookings were don’t by a different department so just weren’t honoured. They now tell me they need to “upgrade” my smart meter but they can’t do that because the new systems aren’t ready and I basically just have to pay estimated bills for the foreseeable. Absolute shower of shits.

I went from £270 to £825 with British Gas, but that was for a QUARTER. And I'm still cross about it...

@SunshinePie when a billing company installs a smart (electricity) meter, they give you a small box with an LCD display so you can see how many watts the house is currently using and other figures like the current meter reading and the price per unit kWHr and day rate. I'm in the house watching TV ATM, the fridge freezer and another fridge is on, the gas boiler, internet router and microwave also use a bit of electricity... usage now is 280W - when I put my electric bike battery on change it goes up to 450W. If I look on the charger it says for the input that it can draw a current of up to 2.5A so the maximum power it would be using would be 2.5 x 240=600 Watts - so the battery charger is using a lot less than than ATM 450-280=180 Watts - probably because the battery is not far off being fully charged. Do by turning things on and off I can get an idea of what is using the most power. The obvious things are electric shower, oven, washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher, kettle - we issue the washing machine and dishwasher only when they are full. Pretty much all washes are done at 30C and the dishwasher at the lowest setting of 35C. Once in a blue moon we do a hot wash. If you don't think it's any of these devices that are being used too often then I guess it's the insulation in your house you're going to have to look at improving. An electric vehicle will also bump up your usage.

My 6 bed was £350 last year. £450 when fixed rate ended, now £565

Were you paying enough before or in arrears?

My bill has gone up by 30% in the last month. From the start of the year it's gone up by 75%

Just cancel your direct debit and pay monthly. The energy companies (in my opinion) are using the situation to overcharge so essentially you’re giving them an interest-free loan. Lots of people are panicking and paying it. Don’t be one of them!

Bulb said I could only reduce the suggested direct debit to 90 percent. The suggested amount is based on previous usage and I’ve cut down quite a lot an wasn’t prepared to pay their suggested amount when I’ve been quite cold some days and I have cold showers. Doesn’t mean you have to pay what they suggest….you can move to a variable direct debit or pay monthly but you obviously need to remember to send a meter reading every month.

That seems very high but then it depends on the square footage of your house. Number of bedrooms isn’t the best indicator tbh.