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

We used 4500 kwh in December (4 people, large detached house) so that usage is feasible. We used between 50 and 230 kwh per day.

@user11111111111111 I can’t comment on your rates (all you need to do it plug your annual consumption in kWh into the tariffs to see which is cheaper).
But I’m in an old badly insulated 3 bed with someone home all day and we used 2000kwh gas in Dec compared with your 5000kwh. So regardless of rates you’ve been using an astonishing quantity of gas.

It’s easy, turn the heating and any gas appliances off, is the gas meter still turning?
put the heating on for 2 hours and see how many “units” of gas have been used. Convert to kWh if poss then you can compare with other people.

I think you are using more than you realise. In past 2 years I’ve cut my fuel consumption in half (literally), yet my bill has doubled. It’s very very easy to have a high bill now if you haven’t changed your usage patterns as prices have gone up almost 4 fold.

M3 is cubic metres which is converted to
kwh, it will say on your bill how this is done or on Google

Also see if you can download the Loop Energy app and connect your meters to it. My supplier won’t give me an in home display as they claim not to have one compatible with my old smart meter.
But my meter connects to the Loop app and I get a lot more info about usage

Can people not read the fucking thread before commenting? It's not the rate, it's not the economy 7, it's not leaving the heating on too much, the OP has been incorrectly billed.

Hope you get it sorted op. I realised that we were being charged night rates all day recently and it was all sorted with an email.

If you want them to act you need to state, on writing, that you are making a formal claimant as they are not willing to help you resolve this issue. Once you have done that they have a set period in which to resolve it. If not, then you ask for a letter of stalemate from than. With this you can then open a case with the ombudsman. Also, probably worth now asking for a subject access request will will include transcripts of phonecalls. Use this as evidence too.

@user11111111111111 I've bumped this as Kerning has been really helpful and hopefully has solved your problem.

Thank you. I can't describe how much this has been frustrating and worrying me, I felt like I was going mad! Mumsnet really is a wonderful place. I'm still too scared to put my heating on until they confirm that it is their error, but I will be on the phone first thing Monday morning.

Thank you so much.

Looking at your electricity, your unit rates after the Energy Price Guarantee has been applied are:

Day: 42.24p
Night: 14.18p

If you were on a non-day/night tariff and were just paying a single rate, typically this would be around 34p after the Energy Price Guarantee has been applied (it varies by region and how you pay).

So would you have paid less or more if you were on a single rate electricity tariff?

You were charged £95.61 for electricity usage of 274.8 kWh (excluding standing charge and VAT).

Had you been on a single rate tariff of 34p you would have been charged £93.43.

So not a massive difference in terms of usage but bear in mind 1) your unit rate could be higher than 34p depending on where you are etc and 2) a single rate tariff may have a higher standing charge than the day/night tariff you are on.

Bit of a classic for them to get the units wrong.

Has happened other times on here. One person was being billed in ft3 when they should have been billed in ft3x100. Their bill of course was tiny !

Being billed in ft3x100 instead of m3 means they think you are using 3x as much gas as you actually are !

@GasPanic 1 cubic meter is about 35 cubic feet.

@larkstar no, it's not.
Gas panic is correct. The conversion factor from 100 c ft to m3 is 2.83.

I managed to get hold of someone from octopus through social media, they are still just telling me to reset the metre rather than looking at the bill, I feel like I'm going mad
I've sent them the photos of the metre and an explanation of what we think is happening but no further response so far...

@CatOnTheChair
x by 2.83 is to convert m3 to 100 ft3
x by 35 is to convert m3 to ft3
2.83 is simply 100/35.315

Apologies, @larkstar
I read it fast after already correcting someone that the bill would be 35 times lower if the conversion was wrong.

You were right! They've refunded me! They were going to make me wait 3 working days to check the bill was wrong with a specialist but when I complained they miraculously managed to get hold of a specialist and have amended the bill.

Thank you so much you wonderful people. Now I can get the heating on and enjoy the weekend

Excellent news! Enjoy the warmth.

Glad to hear it's been sorted out. Hope you have a cosy weekend

Well done! I had a battle last year with Yorkshire gas and power. It took ofgen involvement to get them to shift their arses!

[imagines OP and family with that thermostat racked up to 30, laying on the sofa in the nakey eating Magnums]
Well done!

That is so fantastic OP I hope you are currently in a bikini and fanning yourself whilst complaining how hot you are.

I assume this was just ('just') a cock-up when you moved to Octopus, the details of the meter were recorded incorrectly. I would definitely send an email to Octopus about the brush-off they gave you so many times.

I'm with EDF because their customer service is excellent (for me up to date)

Running washing machines and dishwashers and going to bed is like playing Russian roulette imo. They're both fire hazards.

Well done, OP.

Have they backdated the repayment to the start of their ft3 error? Or just the current bill?

Just refunded the current bill at the moment, I will start the complaints process to get the rest back tomorrow. I also think they should pay for the plumber that they advised us to get because if they'd have bothered to check the bill during any of my phone calls/emails to them then they would have seen that it was their error not mine.

We have been with them for 3 years so not sure why they suddenly started charging us different.

If it wasn't for me coming on here I would still be non the wiser which is just crazy!