Scottish Power bill increase error help!

[Donhill]

I am with Scottish Power for gas and electric. I have a smart meter. I was in credit by £800 and was expecting it to be used up by the winter months as usual.

My issue is that Scottish Power now seem to say all the credit has gone and I now am in debit by £200 all in just two months. I haven’t done anything different over the last 2 months (other than what you would expect from heating etc from winter months like every other year). On the app the graph of my usage doesn’t show a huge increase in the last 2 months (other than usual winter increase that should eat into credit but not make it all disappear in 2 months!). But the meter readings they are using are correct in that they are the same as the smart meter.

So what is going on?? Graph shows all as normal and in line with what we would expect from time of year. But meter reading seems to result in massive increase over last 2 months. And again, significantly more (3 times more) than I would expect from last winter’s figures. Resulting in £1000 usage over 2 months.

Any thoughts?? Help please! They want to
massively increase my monthly DD so I am financially screwed, it seems, even though I am careful and thought it was under control!

Surely you can see what you are spent each month from your smart meeting?

How often do Scottish Power bill you? Some companies let the credit build up for several months so you look like you have lots of credit and then only bill a couple of times a year at which point the credit drops drastically.

How much do you currently pay per month?

How often do they bill? Every month, every 3 months? Was the £800 credit on your account after a bill or was that just a build up of your DD but before a bill?

Has your fixed rate ended?

Is the usage correct, smart meter or manual readings?
Check the unit rates are correct, have they gone up in error?
Definitely go through all your bills to see.

Billed every 3 months but actually seems to be slightly random. The credit was a build up before a bill, so I know it wasn’t an accurate reflection of actual credit. I was expecting the credit to go down significantly but it has been more than wiped out.
The meter readings on smart meter are shown correctly in the current bill. Up until this bill I have been paying DD and checking and it seemed at roughly the right amount, smart meter seemed to be working etc. Now, nothing has changed in my usage, but in the space of 2 months it looks like I have used £1000 and DD is massively too low.

I’ll check the unit rates, thank you!

The credit will have existed because your meter reading hadn’t been sent in. As soon as the meter was read the credit would have been used up. And yes £300 a month in this season is perfectly possible

We don't have a smart meter but I thought part of the appeal was that it sent your reading every month and your DD was adjusted?

We're with SP and submit readings every month which allows us to adjust the DD by small amounts, rather than getting a shock bill. That might be something to consider moving forward?

Okay, so comparing exactly the same period last year, the same two months, we used 789 kWh last year, where as this year the meter says we have used 2342kwh. We are living in much the same way obviously with some normal variation but nothing drastic to show how in a two month period we are meant to have used three times more electricity.

Incidentally, on the app you can look at a graph of usage and the last two months don’t show a drastic increase. But apparently the graph might not be accurate. So not sure what the point of it is, but still…..

Is the meter number on your bill the number on your meter?

Yes correct meter.

thanks everyone for all your help by the way.

2342kwh is more than my annual usage. Is it possible someone else has linked up to your supply? Switch everything off at the main fuse board. If the meter is still recording usage then there's a problem somewhere. If nothing shown there then turn everything off and turn back on again individually to see if any of them are consuming a higher amount than expected.

So the £800 credit on your account was consumed by your useage, and it seems from your post you were expecting to receive a refund or credit back.

Remember that the standing charges swallow up quite a lot of the credit too nowadays and gone are the days of the zero standing charge so we can not reduce our energy bills any more other than reducing our useage. It's an absolute pain in the backside for the consumer.

I suspect the rising costs of energy, higher tarrifs and massive standing charges are the reason for your unexpected high bill OP, and I totally sympathise with you here. The consumer is expected to bail out the energy companies because ofgem decide they have to protect the suppliers, and the safety net has gone for the consumer.

It's worth looking at the app in £ mode rather than kwh. You should then be able to see your actual cost of electricity per month.

Does your electric heat your house?

Do you have a boiler that switches off, on, off, on all the time because your house is not very well insulated and cannot hold heat very well?

The kWh does seem extreme, but late November and half of December was bitterly cold this year versus last year. Last year was really quite mild. Our oil consumption goes through the roof when high winds hit the house because the thermostats are constantly fighting being on an external wall that get hit with cold. So even though the house doesn't actually get much warmer than usual, the stupidly placed thermostats often think the house is in the arctic. We have had a LOT of high winds this year.

An afterthought. You didn't switch from a standard oven to a range cooker this year, did you? Because they use an absolute ton more energy than standard 60cm cookers. Even brand new, energy efficient ones.

That can’t be correct. We use 500kw average, 650kw is absolute max a Month. That’s a 6 bedroom, 2 full separate household property (so 6-7 people), working from home, electric car charged also. 2400kw in a month is huge

Another afterthought. Someone in your house didn't turn on the immersion switch to heat your hot water and then not turn it off, did they?

We had to do that for our first two months in our current house and it cost us an extra £700 in electricity.

Stories like this are exactly what puts me off getting another smart meter. We used to have one and was never convinced the bills were accurate and then switched the supplier and the old smart meter wouldn’t work. I just enter our readings online now and am paying what seems to be an accurate amount, similar to what we’ve paid for years (have had fixed tariff for a few years). We pay £145 ish a month. 3 bed semi.
I’d be horrified to get a bill like yours, OP, I hope you work it out with them.

Your usage is extremely high, double check the meter reads and period time. If all as it says, I would lodge a complaint and ask them to investigate your faulty meter.

It's unlikely that it's something that they will look into without it being flagged by the customer, they will assume that you have checked and accepted the bill as correct and sat back and counted the pennies.

The central heating is gas, the immersion heater is electricity.

Thanks all! Really good to know that you all think 2342kwh is huge. As I said it’s three times more than we used for the same period last year without any obvious reason why. Particularly given the central heating is gas so it can’t just be colder weather.

I’m going to try shutting everything off, and check the appliances, and then try contacting Scottish Power again. So far they haven’t been any help, but I’m clearer now what the problem is will see if that helps.

Surely your gas also heats water and you shouldn't need to use the immersion switch except if there was an issue with your gas

We have had a year long ongoing battle with Scottish Power regarding our bill, they only billed us for gas and were ‘unable’ to bill us correctly for electricity due to an error when they set up the account, we built up close to £1000 in credit, which we were not happy about,but like yourself thought it will pay off the year and carry us through the winter…long story short we took them to OFGEM twice and won both times and they had to pay us compensation, we received a zero bill at the end of October 2023, and at the end of November we switched to another supplier, and now Scottish Power are trying to final bill us £200 for four weeks electricity….seems they do this on a regular basis with customers….I will not be paying it and will go to OFGEM for a third time, I think you should try them,they are really kind and helpful.