Please help, been living in hell with energy bill

[user11111111111111]

We are with Octopus Energy on their variable rate. Last month our gas bill was over 500 and our electric was 200. We only had the heating on for two hours a day and heated the water for an hour. We live in a four bedroom house but have always been frugal with our energy use. We have had a plumber out to check our boiler- there's no issues and it's efficient.

We have a Smart metre but Octopus refuse to give us a home working display and their app will not connect to our smart metre so we don't know our usage until we are billed which causes us a lot of stress. Octopus has said they can send an engineer to check our metre but that "that won't be the problem" and they will charge us. Hence a month of being too scared to put the heating on and being miserable. We can see our breath in the house.

We are on Octopus's variable rate. I think the EDF variable rate is cheaper, but this has surprised me as lots of people rave about Octopus Energy. Even though Octopus have been terrible to us I am nervous about switching and potentially being worse off.

Can any of you clever minds confirm to me that EDF is cheaper?

Octopus
Elec Day rate: 86.79
Elec Night rate: 34.27
Standing charge: 35.6
Gas unit rate: 14.04
Standing charge: 25.56

EDF
Elec day rate: 54.45
Elec night rate: 6.99
Standing charge: 39.02
Gas unit rate: 10.308
Standing charge: 28.48

I'd move off the tariff with seperate day/night rates unless you have storage heaters. Plus those rates are ridiculous. The electricity night rate is approx the cap and your day rate is roughly 2.5 times the cap😯.

The cap is 34p to 36p electricity and 10.3p gas. With economy 7 the day rate is usually above the cap but the octopus rates are ridiculous.

We use a lot of electricity at night, our dishwasher/washing machine etc goes on in the night to save money. Is this not something you would recommend?
Does the EDF rate look better to you?

EDF rate looks miles better, and it sounds as though they might treat you better as well.

Thank you that's helpful. There are so many reviews stating that Octopus Energy are best for customer service, respond quickly etc but my experience has been the complete opposite.

Edf is much cheaper. I don't understand why the octopus rate is so high? I put my postcode into their calculator and got 47p day and 18p night
octopus.energy/quote/#/tariffs

Are you sure youre on the variable cap rate?

Yes the EDF rates are much better. The higher standing charges workout at less than £2 a week but you'd save a hell of a lot more than that with the different in rates.

I think the cap comes off at the end of our bill.
Our fixed rate ended in October/November I wonder if we were moved onto a bad rate? Maybe new customers get a better rate?

I'm with EDF. I am due my first Electricity & Gas bill for 6 months this week. I've been on their variable tariff since the increase in prices.
I have £1500 in credit in my account with them, every couple of months they have been returning £60+ as I have been "saving" too much 😅
Personally I think that EDF is a reliable energy company and I have no plans to change.

I don't understand your rates - they are so high. I'm also with Octopus but on their flexible tariffs. My rates attached.

Unless you have an all electric house there is no chance it will be cheaper for you to be on Economy 7 or 10. Look at your total day and night units and work out how much the cost would be using the standard rate (off the top of my head it's something like 30 something p per kwh). Even with an electric house, water heated overnight, heating trying to concentrate on low rate Economy 10 times, washing machine on low rate period 80% of the time and dishwasher about 60% of the time it can still be a pretty close call if Economy 10 is cheaper than a standard single rate.

That's ridiculously high rates. Have you an electric car that you charge overnight ? If you've a gas boiler the extra they charge you through the day outweighs any benefits from the cheap electric at night

Do you have storage heaters?
If not, then you shouldn't really be on an economy 7 tariff with a day and night rate as the lower night rate is because that's when the storage heaters are charging up.

If you don’t have storage heaters then get off the 2 tarrif rate

I’m with EDF have a smart meter
i used to be on a two tarrif now I’m on pay as you go - pre pay
I pay 32.9 pence per kwh

gas is similar to your rate with British gas
pre pay meter

if you do swop to a SVR make sure by checking the meter that it’s been swopped
I had a issue for a few weeks where I was alon a high 45.p per kWh single rate which was the e7 day rate in oct rather than the lower SVR

I find edf to be great
no issue getting through
the app / on line stuff is very good

I've attached photos of my tariff rate

Also E7 is normally for electric only houses rather than electricity and gas

We use an app called Loop to monitor our usage. As like you can't have a home display replaced after the original one stopped working. Loop uses your smart meter data, so is just as accurate as a home display.

I don't understand why the octopus rate is so high? I put my postcode into their calculator and got 47p day and 18p night

I have done the same and checked my latest Octopus bill. The low rates shown in the calculator are after the energy price discount is applied.

What does it say on your actual bill? We're with Octopus and our electricity/ gas is charged at similar rates. But there is then another line called Energy Price Guarantee which deducts the difference between those rates and the price cap.

It really confused me at first (we've only just moved to Octopus as we moved house).

@user11111111111111 do you have an old bill with actual usage, not estimated?

Depending on where you are these are the day / night rates and SVR for octopus

are you sure your not on a business or renewable energy rate

octopus.energy/blog/energy-price-cap-oct-2022/

The OP does not appear getting the energy price discount. Hence the high rates.

I think you need to check an octopus bill - fairly certain there will be a discount off the gas rate to bring it back to the price cap, the electricity could well be similar.

You are going to need to do some maths.
Find a bill, and locate the annual usage part.
Double check any rebates on the electricity, and note the annual spend on your current rates.
Then calculate what the annual spend on the EDF rates will be.
And also calculate what your spend would be on the price cap, no night rate. It would be rare for a house with gas heating to need an E7/E10 rate, unless you also have an electric car.

This was our bill/usage for December

Yeah, your day rate is closer to 42p/kWh, and night 14p/kWh.
Gas is 10p/kWh.