Please help, been living in hell with energy bill

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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'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.

Same here. Ancient rambling house with no double glazing and solid stone walls. The boiler is nearly 50 years old.

I really hope that is the issue - when did you get your smart meter fitted?

It is just very odd that your projected gas usage for the entire year is 10,000 kwh but then they claim you used nearly half of that in a single month (ok a winter month, but even so!)

Yes of they are billing you for f³ and your meter measures in m³ then you are being overcharged

I'd raise it with them and send photos too

I've just looked back and for the period covering the snow in December my bill equates to £52 a week. For Xmas/New Year when the heating was on more it's about £63 a week. If you work that out over a month, there's something very wrong with your gas usage.
I know this is a bit 'out there' but there couldn't be an external leak between where you connect to the street main and where it enters your house? I'm sure you would be aware if there were an internal leak, but perhaps not if it was out front of the house?
Clutching at straws, I know.

Smart metre was fitted by another company several years ago, when we switched to octopus they didn't provide us with a home working display. Over the last three years I have emails with octopus where they have told me I'm on a waiting list for a home working display. When I phoned them last week they told me they would add me to the waiting list- despite me having evidence I was on the list three years ago (I suspect there is no such list and that they just don't provide these working displays for that generation of smart metre).
It seems they switched the measurements for gas at some point over the last few months, I'm really hoping that has created this error! They aren't open over the weekend so another cold weekend waiting to speak to them.

We paid for a plumber to come out and check for leaks and the boiler for efficiency. He said there were no problems at all, seems strange to think that we were hoping to be told we needed a new boiler!

Put the bloody heating on! You're going to get the bill sorted Monday

Could you contact them on twitter?

That's absolutely appalling that they're trying to rip people off like this

There's so many people that wouldn't challenge discrepancies

Get off Economy 7 - those rates are not capped in the same way as a single straight tariff so they can charge anything they like and... Clearly that's what they are doing. I'm guessing you probably bought a house that was on Economy 7 because they had storage heaters?

Yes, it should be calculated as m3 on the statement. All suppliers convert it into kWh for the actual billing but if they’re converting cubic feet instead of m3 then this could cause a big difference! I’m not sure if octopus do this but bulb show the calculation into kWh on the statement so you can work it out manually if needed.

Your bill says the reading on 1 December was a customer reading not a smart metre reading. Were these correct? If they were too low, your December bill will look large due to catching up. Were your previous bills correct, do they go up to the readings shown on this bill for 1 December?

Agree with others that you shouldn't be on E7 unless you have storage heaters and/or an electric car. Use of washing machine and dishwasher is small in comparison.

Have you looked at your online Octopus account? Even if you don't have the inhome display, which is only really so you can see the immediate impact due to high consumption appliances running, you should be able to see your usage broken down into half hour intervals, and all past bills.

You should also get an estimate of your annual consumption, which is more useful than a single bill as it can be used to work out what your direct debit should be, and also compare your consumption against the annual average of 12000 kWh gas and 2900 kWh for electricity. In a 4 bed house, it should probably be around a third or so above these numbers as its meant to represent a family of 3 or 4 in a 2 or 3 bed house with gas heating.

They don't deliberately try to rip people off. When you're dealing with hundreds of thousands of customers, mistakes happen, sometimes due to their incompetence, sometimes down to the customer - reading errors etc.

Everyone should check all their bills to make sure they're correct. They're not completely blameless if they blindly assume the bill will be correct and just pay it, especially if it's obviously wrong.

OP, there's no point comparing unit costs as you've listed them in the OP as they don't show the reduction to the price cap - you aren't actually paying those rates.

They appear to have cocked up your bill. Your meter is in cubic meters, they are billing you based on cubic feet.

Your gas usage should be roughly this:

Dec reading 5056.3
Jan reading 5212.8
Consumption (m3) 156.5

To convert 156.5 cubic meters to kWh use this formula:

Unit Consumed (Cubic Meters) x Volume Conversion Factor x Volume Correction (for temperature & pressure) x Calorific Value (energy in each m³ of gas) ÷ 3.6 (convert from joules)

So we have this (using the values for Volume Correction and Calorific Value from my own bill with a different energy supplier):

(156.5 x 1 x 1.022640 x 39.2) / 3.6 = 1,742 kWh

They have your kWh as 4917 because they have calculated your bill based on 156.5 cubic feet.

To convert 156.5 cubic feet to kWh use this formula:

Unit Consumed (Cubic Feet) x Volume Conversion Factor x Volume Correction (for temperature & pressure) x Calorific Value (energy in each m³ of gas) ÷ 3.6 (convert from joules)

So if we do what you energy company has done - convert your usage from cubic feet to kWh - we have:

(156.5 x 2.83 x 1.022640 x 39.2) / 3.6 = 4,931 kWh

Check your bill - it should show the formula and values they have used to calculate the bill, the values may be a little different to the ones I have used which would explain why I got 4931 kWh and your bill shows 4917 kWh.

There's an energy bill calculator here where you can compare side-by-side the kWh and costs based on cubic feet and cubic meters:

www.businessenergy.com/business-gas/gas-bill-calculator/

Yes, 4900 kWh of gas is very high for one month, far more than you'd expect to pay, even in winter.

Our gas for 7/12 to 7/1 was 1500 kWh, our house is smaller, but we were at home a lot and aren't particularly restrictive with the heating.

The service I received from Octopus was very good, and the errors were related to various issues with readings and estimates. But I must say I had a sleepless night before calling them!

I'd recommend that anyone with a bill that doesn't quite make sense to call their supplier and get them to check it and go through it with a fine tooth comb.

OP I really hope you get it all sorted. It is horrible being cold all the time.

What is confusing me is that when I have phoned up the options I have been given are to pay for my own plumber to see if there is a fault, or pay for their engineer to look at the smart metre (although in both phone calls they assured me the problem wouldn't be with the smart metre). At no point did they suggest going through the bill. I probably should have thought of it but I assumed that meant they had looked and it was correct.

Holy moly that rate is eye watering.

I'm on economy 10 with utilita and it is 55p peak and 5.5p off peak (changed in Jan from 45/10.5p) . Not sure if they have to offer better rates for electric only as there's no gas here.

There's no benefit to a split tariff unless you are using heating and hot water on it (i.e don't have gas or oil) or run an electric car.

You'd be better on a flat rate.

The gas is high but won't be for the whole year so the electric is more of an issue

Yes, the bill is wrong. Ring them and tell them you have a metric meter, and are being billed for an imperial meter, and you want them to back calculate and refund a the overpayment since they created the mistake.

Get that sorted first, then look at the electricity.

I am with EDF.only have electric. Have storage heaters. My night right is super low. From 12.30 to 7.30am. so I do my washing and drying between those times.

You'll have to phone them again and explain your gas meter readings are cubic meters and your bill is being calculated on cubic feet. Maybe send them the photograph of your meter which shows m3 (include the meter serial number in the photo so they know it's your meter).

I estimate your actual gas bill should be approx £190:

Usage: £171.06
Standing charge: £7.92
Total: £178.98
Plus 5% VAT: £187.93

Sorry I meant the above on the basis that you get to the bottom of the confusion of how they are changing the gas.

Your electric is high. How many KWh do you use a month? Do you have an immersion tank that runs on the lower rate? You are not getting any value unless you have high power items on it (and even then it's a pretty rubbish tariff)

My cap is now 33p electric and 10.5p gas on octopus flexible