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

So the rate we are on is good?

The gas is as good as you are going to get.
Because of the day/night rates, you need to calculate through the deals, because the EDF has one cheaper rate, one higher. Some houses will be better with EDF, some with Octopus.

So the rate we are on is good?

It’s more or less the same as we are paying.

How can it be that I have friends in similar size houses and same boilers who keep their heating on all day and night, and are only paying £300? We weren't even a comfortable temperature last month, we were still cold as we didn't put the heating on much. I really just want there to be something we can fix so we don't have to live like this anymore.

Hang on.
You have a smart meter?
You are being billed in cb ft for gas. That is exceptionally unlikely. Can you go grab a photo of the front of the gas meter. I'm expecting it to say m3 on it somewhere. It might, just might say cb ft. But I suspect your gas bill, before standing charges is about 3 times higher than it should be due to a billing error

A £300 Direct Debit would probably be about right (maybe even a bit high) for that kind of usage. There's only a few months of the year that you'll have high gas, so it evens out across the year. In the summer, your total monthly bill will likely be about £150.

If she’s being billed for cubic feet and submitting readings for cubic metres, her bill would be 35 times lower.

Unfortunately not, only 2.83 conversion factor between m3 and 100 cb ft.
But still enough to make a significant difference to the bill!

This is the smart metre. The octopus app does not connect to it, but they get sent readings directly from the metre.

I can understand paying £300 as it's in line with what other people are paying, but over £600 when we were being really careful just doesn't make sense to me

I had a HUGE bill from Octopus arrive last week. Customer service were extremely helpful and it turns out there were multiple errors on the bill, and after revised readings and the rep working through our bill it was corrected and significantly reduced. It is worth calling them - stay on the line to talk to someone rather than email - and hopefully they can run through your bill to make sure it is correct or otherwise.

Agree the problem here is the day/night rate. Even with overnight storage heaters it has worked out better for us to go on a day rate as they have to stick to the cap rate of 35p- but with an overnight tariff this does not seem to be the case.
Do you have electric storage heaters? If not go on a day rate.

I have phoned customer service multiple times and every time they have said there will be no error. No one has gone through the bill with us though. It's so strange that my experience with them seems to be so different from the majority

I'm more concerned at your gas usage than the electricity. I'm with octopus, similar gas price, big house, and December was just over £200, we were off work for 2 weeks and it was -9 some nights, the heating was on a LOT and we have 17 radiators and a 10 year old boiler. Something seems wrong.

The front of the meter says m³ not ft³

I think you need to query this with Octopus. We are on octopus standard tariff and last month paid £310 for electricity and gas. We have the heating set to 17 all day which is comfortable, occasionally boost to 18 for kids bathtimes. We also use the dryer pretty much daily although it is a heat pump dryer and really efficient. We don't have a smart meter though and just provide readings once a month. We also had a new boiler installed last year which may help a bit as well but surely not that much. I'd say you are paying way too much for what you are using.

Are you on Facebook? There is an amazing page called Energy support and advice. Really knowledgeable people on there.

I too am on Octopus flexible, just checked and my rates are
46.87 day
18.02 night
41.13 standing

Gas is 10.30 with a 26.84 standing charge.

Something is awry.

I've just checked. In December we used just over 2000 kwh of gas. Heating on at least 4-6 hours per day. You used double that for 2 hours per day.

Can you press a button on the gas meter to wake the screen and see what the reading has next to it - most smart meters now do measure in m3 so this could potentially be an issue.

If they are billing using f³ rather than m³ then you are being overcharged. The front of the smart meter definitely has m³ on it.

Metre has M3 on it, does that we could be being overcharged?

I've always resisted getting a smart meter and don't regret it.
So at the moment, you can't read the meter yourself because it doesn't display at your end? I would hate that.
I submit my meter readings every two weeks and get bills online a few hours later so I can adjust my budgets as necessary.

We have our heating on most of the day when it's cold and our direct debit is £270. However our bill for December was over £600 ish. We built up a big credit over summer and it us only a few months when the heating is on so much.

It would seem so, ring them and see how you get on. I have my fingers crossed this is the issue for you OP.