To find gas and electric companies really confusing?

[jerkorperk]

With bills.

Got a final bill because I moved house. British Gas. The final bill is over £300, despite me always paying via direct debit and never missing a payment

Then they seem to add some waffle into why that is. All very badly explained with someone clearly reading from a script with English as a firm second language, who is unclear and not listening

I have moved properties and this one is with someone else entirely. But I've seen suggestions of Octupus. Typed it into google and loads of horror story reviews of them setting up direct debits and then charging random amounts into the hundreds!

Can someone advise me of a clear and easy to use energy service?

Bump

I work for one. What is it that you are struggling with for the bill?

I would say the smart meter is your friend here. Then you can monitor your consumption and check that your DD matches.
So it doesn't matter if your DD for BG was always paid on time if your consumption exceeded the amount you were paying. You need to look at both, the amount and the usage.
Pick the company that explains it best to you. I am personally with Octopus and I find them good, I like the app and I like how it shows my consumption and I understand it all. You may be different

I've also never had issues getting refund on positive balance.

I can also help you understand bills, i worked for them for 10 years.

Were you sending in regular meter readings as well?

Your direct debit may not have been high enough to cover your actual usage. It's surprising how many people think they can use an unlimited amount of energy for a set monthly price.

Did you check your account regularly to see if you were in any debit? Did you have a smart meter and check it to make sure the reads match up with what is on the bill? If not, did you provide regular meter reads to make sure your bill was actual and not estimated?

You need to send regular meeting readings - at least monthly. So they know your payments are keeping you on track vs your usage. I'm with Scottish power and have been for about 5 years. I find their website very easy to use and it allows me to up and down my direct debit to keep up with usage and it also tells me I can't go below £X amount per month otherwise it won't keep up with usage. Their fixed rates are competitive and I had an issue where their website had a fault and I couldn't get onto a fixed rate I'd requested before it was pulled- they got me on the rate and refunded me £500 for the inconvenience and difference in rates. Great service.

Did you provide monthly or quarterly meter readings to your supplier,

OP I have found every single energy supplier I’ve used to be incompetent. Every single one. I’m a lawyer, used for reading and undertaking complicated concepts. My numeracy skills are also strong. But I have always ended up taking my energy companies before the Energy Ombudsman - chiefly because of unclear/inaccurate/untrustworthy billing.

Ovo billed me nearly £1000 for a month’s worth of energy last year. Various “explanations”/excuses: seems they’re struggling to alight on the appropriate one. They’ve offered me a paltry £100 for the shit they’ve put me through, and the amount of my time they’ve wasted, which I’ve rejected. Ombudsman currently investigating.

They are all crap.

I disagree with @Keepthosenamesgoing about the smart meter. I've never had an accurate one, the readings taken remotely never matched the numbers on the meter itself. Also, you often have to program your tariff yourself in to see your actual costs.

To your question though @jerkorperk both gas and electric have two components. A standing charge which you pay regardless of whether you use any energy, and a usage charge which you pay per unit of energy (either gas or electric).

Where it often gets confusing is when the supplier changes the tariff midway through a cycle, but they should show the amount of usage for each portion.

If you don't send in meter readings, the company will guess your usage until you do send a reading (or they come and read your meter). This is where smart meters should be useful as they should know your reading without you sending anything to them.

I'm with British Gas, and they generally guess fairly accurately.

@HappiestSleeping I should clarify. I never use the stupid device they gave me for the smart meter but the Octopus app shows all my meter readings daily and so monitoring consumption is very easy

Having just spent over 2 months trying to get a final bill off EDF and our £64 credit balance back, I can assure you that energy companies are highly inefficient and incompetent. After much chasing (and 2 x £30 compensation payments as an admission of them failing to meet OFGEM rules) they finally issued me with a bill for ........66p!
We submitted a reading the day we left them and have a smart meter!

Partner is with BG. Lives alone. I am on PAYG with Utilita. Mine is cheaper than his and there's 3 of us here including 2 teens. Even when 4 here mine was still cheaper. I've been informed my new estimate will go down £2. He's been advised his is going up. Their app doesn't work and hasn't for about 2 years for him. I will be moving in with him soon and I'm dreading the G&E bill. I'm going to try and ring with monthly estimates once I'm in. We really do find BG to be one of if not the worst we have had dealings with

My final bill with BG was genuinely wrong. About a year(!) later they refunded me. I agree their bills are confusing (and I'm good with numbers). They can't even get the sign right on the numbers.

Have to say I really like Octopus, but everyone seems to have heard bad things about all the suppliers.

The important thing in energy is your tariff. The way energy bills are talked about is in the main nonsense. In the media they talk about the price cap and the average household spend say 1500 per annum. Meaningless. Also Meaningless is the way when you ask for a quote they quote say 200 per month.

Know your tariff, Inc the standing charge and know how many kW you use a
month and send meter readings regularly. Personally I wouldn't get a smart meter..its easy enough to see your usage on the meter anyway

And the way it is talked about leads to massive confusion as people then think they can't be charged a penny more than the average yearly cost. I work in customer services and people end up getting into debt because they use shit loads of energy thinking that they can use as much as they want and not get charged more.

I also got a final bill from BG and it was £1500. They added my payments from 2024 but not the payments from 2023. Nobody could explain where these payments are but just kept saying it’s correct. They also gave me an estimate bill during the summer which was higher than my winter usage. It’s currently with the ombudsman.

Interesting. Have you ever compared the meter readings the Octopus app shows with the display on the meter? In my cases, it's been for rental properties where the energy company took a remote reading which disagreed with the check out report (photo of the meter on a specific day).

In every instance, I had been over billed. Over time, maybe it evens out, but since mine was related to a hard stop of an end of tenancy it needed to be accurate.

Hence, I don't trust them at all now.

If you are paying by direct debit then they are using predictions to estimate future usage based on your meter reading history.
Example, if you have always paid £100 and your payments cover your usage then fine but if you suddenly start using more fuel but the 12 month direct debit arrangement hasn't been reset then you will get landed with a bill.

@HappiestSleeping no I've not actually ! Will do so .. thanks for tip