In thinking that £30-£40 a week on gas in a 2.5 bed end terraced house is not right

[ijustwanttoaskaquestion]

I mean, it can't be surely?? We have a gas meter - we pay £12 a week to pay off a debt. but the £30-£40 a week is on top of that, so we are actually having to pay aout £50!!! We are struggling financially and this is crippling us.

I am sat here frozen and wont have the heating on all day, most days we have it on only for a couple of hours a night to heat up DDs room - her room is particularly cold. We have a multi fuel stove which we use for heat. There are only the three of us here, so no vast quantities of hot water used, we cook with gas but thats about it.

Surely that is too much to be paying? We have recently had a new efficient boiler fitted too, so cant even blame a dodgy central heating system. The house is draughty but £40 a WEEK on gas????

Or am i just being niave?

My dsis is the same as you and I pay 30.00 a week.

If you didn't see the BG webchat yesterday and are a customer with BG he has put his email address on it.

It is crippling and not fair at all.

Actually, £40/week sounds about correct.

I didn't say 'right', because I think it's highway robbery, but it sounds pretty standard for being on a meter.

Doesn't seem right, no.

I have a similar house with GCH and my Gas bill is about £55 per month.

Are you paying that on Direct Debit or directly? And are you submitting regular meter readings?

What's your electric bill like? Could you maybe get a heater for key rooms and shift the cost.

Also, heavy curtains, draft excluders under doors, carpets and rugs etc. You're probably doing all this but it makes a real difference to how warm a room gets and stays.

keyed meters cost more.

also, beware of direct debits because a lot of times they debit too low, then say, 'oh, it was an estimate and you used more, so here's you a catch up bill for £600.'

I would say we use around £20-30 and we have dodgy old back boiler. I don't put the heating on during the day and wear jumpers, we do have double glazing though.

We have finished paying our debt on the gas meter and it is a huge relief, I can tell you. I think the problem with the pre pay meter is you don't really know what you are being charged for the gas you use. We never had a statement or anything to tell us how much we paid towards the debt or the cost of the gas we were using.

Check your loft insulation is thick enough, get some heavy curtains and consider secondary or double glazing if you can afford it.

Do you actually have thermometers in each room to check the temp? We do and sometimes it isn't actually as cold as you think.

We pay more than that and we are not on a meter (same size house). When we moved in 7 years ago we were paying 20% what we pay now.

It was the direct debits that screwed us - our estimates were sooo wrong, even though I have a steady stream of men calling round to read the meter - at least one a week !

There was no way we could pay it all when we discovered how wrong it was so ended up with a meter...I hate the damn things.

It does sound too much as you are not running the heating much. Cooking doen't use much imo (though if your oven is on a lot it adds a bit), and as I assume your hot water is 'on demand' (as you have new boiler) then that shouldn't use a lot either as you are not using too much.

Does the meter have any kind of unit counter on it so you can see how many meters cubed of gas you are actually using a week?

We pay £130 per month for gas and elec in a similar sized house (although extended out beyond side return on ground floor and one wall is floor to ceiling glass). We have heating on an hour in the mornings and six hours in the evenings during the week and pretty much on constantly at the weekends. We also have a very old and (so I discovered yesterday) 70% efficient boiler .

I am planning to replace the boiler next year so it will be interesting to see what a difference it makes. I will be pretty miffed to still be paying the same this time next year (assuming prices stay the same).

These key meters are a fucking liberty. Almost constantly seem to be at the shop topping ours up, probably doing £40+ on gas at the moment. Biggest pain is if the pilot goes out due to the gas running out a total nuisance

I think that is the thing I hate the most, that I have to keep going to the shop at inconvenient times to top the damn thing up.

Why do you have to let the credit drop so low (under £1?) before you can use emergency credit?

Holy cow, I'm only paying 40 a month into my direct debit. Think I'll check my meter readings! Though I am terribly mean with my heating too as I dread a big top up bill. What you're paying sounds like a lot, though, what a rip off I can't help thinking that energy prices are still incredibly high. I can't even imagine what old people on state pensions do.

We pay 74 a month dual fuel on direct debit and have an old 2 bed mid terrace with bad insulation. This seems to be enough to meet the quarterly bill.

Crikey, I'm in a 2 bed flat (so admittedly fewer outside walls) but our gas bill is less than that per MONTH.

We cook with gas and have heating on most nights.

Is it a pre-payment metre? They are notorious for being shit value. Can you change to a different supplier and ask to be direct debit or is that not a financial option?

I know you are worried about going into the red again with your readings but you could always pay a bit extra into a contingency fund - it's GOT to be better than paying such a high rate for your gas.

The problem is until you have cleared the debt you are stuck with the pre-pay meter. I thought they weren't allowed to over charge on these now? Like I said before though, you wouldn't know, because they don't blardy tell you!

I cannot believe this - I just rung them and the woman said that we are currently using £3.60 a day, but based on the information i told her about how much gas we use it should only be £1.79 a day. So i said, well we went the meter checked, oh no she said, our meters are more than 90% accurate - so she then said that we can have it checked but if there is no problem with the meter it will cost £65 to have this done

I wish i knew that MD was here yesterday as i would have had a few things to say to him!!

We cant change suppliers because we are paying off a debt and the meter was forced upon us - we didnt even want it!! They are such cocks - once we got a bill that they said was for a meter reading of over £800, but they hadn't read our meter for over a year!! it was less than half that when I read the meter - total fuckwits

Have us over a barrell, £250 a month on gas??? WTF??

How is that fair, i want the meter tested but i cant because i cant face the thought of a £65 bill should it be right Just cant afford it

Hmm, I would chance it and threaten to make a complaint unless they get it checked out -see here

you know, washer i will do just that - they are taking the piss!!

Let us know how you get on, I wish I had had ours checked out before, it has cost us a blardy fortune at a time when we could least afford it. I'm still not sure all the debt is paid off but as they never send us any paperwork we probably won't find out until we try and switch back to direct debit.

We had a faulty meter years ago in a flat we rented. I kept calling them to say we weren't getting any bills and they kept saying it was all working fine. I eventually gave up and we never got any bills. At the end of our tenancy I called in the reading and we got a £5 refund! So I would never trust a meter with strange readings.

thats far too much,

Have you chekced whether metre is imperial or metric and that the bill is the same?

hi justa!!!! Are you by any chance fat for a particular reason??? (Lem here)

The woman did mumble something about metric and imperial, its like she couldnt decide which, im going to check that - i made my mum check that because of the electricity and there was a problem there. Thanks for reminding me.

Have just lit my wonderful woodburning stove ready for when DD gets home from school BG aint getting anything out of me today!!!

Think we pay about £70 a month & live in a georgian terrace with 3 beds.
The citizens advice are always a good bet for helping to work out what options you have with debt, liaising with energy companies etc. If your meter was nnot read for a year there could be some recourse on that basis. Give them a call, they do not charge.