Gas bill and estimated annual usage - £7,000

[Gas]

Hi - we have just had £7k taken from our bank account for gas. It is an estimate. We are on holiday so it has cleaned the account out for spending. Normally it is about £1600 for the year.

Checked online our estimated use for the year ahead is 500,000 kWh. This works out about £90,000 on our variable tariff. Does this look like a mistake to you or will bills go up that much? Cannot pay it obviously. It is a large house with 5 bedrooms, though we do not waste heat. Bit shocked this can happen actually.

I could have said February or any time after October...

the prices are supposed to go up 70% in October 2022.

So by February, you'd be arguing with electricity company about when your (now) £7k -worth of usage happened, was a lot of it after October 2022? Was it before October? If after October, you'd be billed more than £7k. At least now you & they agree it happened long before the huge price jump about to happen.

Others are right about the long journey you could go down negotiating down this bill. Adult DD had to do something similar 8 months ago, btw, and if an anxiety-ridden control freak 20 year old can reduce their bill then so could you. But like I said, if you don't think the meter is faulty and lived there all that time, then you did use all that lekki & have moral obligation to pay for it... mostly not at current prices, of course. Although you benefited from spending your money on other things for years, too, and they had cash flow deficit due to you being undercharged. Your bill is presumably As much as £7k probably only because of today's high rates not 2+ years ago much lower rates.

With all the money you have why can't you employ a gardener?

Interesting, thank you. We are also 5 people 5/6 bed detached so maybe 30,000 kwh annual Gas usage is about right then. I've had people on other forums going on about how crazy that is, but I suspect they don't have 3 teens, 2 adults WFH, 6 showers a day etc.

That was to hedgehog btw

Why didn't you ever clear the overgrowth around the meter? How strange not to do so in eight years.

Well this thread is just bat shit crazy, none of it makes any sense.

Yes that corner was left overgrown, for the birds and the hedgehogs. It just happened to be where the meter was put decades ago.

You don't have to pay it.
Contest it.