Oh my god oh my god oh my god, have just received an elec bill for £800 for 3 months!!

[Pawslikepaddington]

There are two of us in a 2 bed house!! Oh my god!! [reaches for brown paper bag]

1. check your meter reading against the one on the bill-if your actually reading is less then inform them and ask them to send you the new bil.

It's the right meter reading, oh god oh god! Surely we can't have used £800 in three months between me and dd? Sob sob sob!

bloody hell!! That's got to be a mistake!!!

How awful, I hope you get it sortted out.

DS and I are living in a two bed flat at the moment, with a card metre for gas, and it costs £1 for every hour of heating we have on, so we don't use it much and live in freezing conditions.

They said it started on an estimated reading, so there is nothing they can do, and it is "a lesson learned for next time hey"-as in I will send in more meter readings! What!!!!! Oh holy moly!

Are you running a lighthouse by any chance? Do you have gas too?

So what period of time does it really cover, then?

I think you need to get back on the phone and arrange payment by instalments.

How long ago do you last have your meter read?

We only had gas for hot water, but I was paying £40 a month which I thought would be slightly low but not too much, as we were only in from 6pm, and I was in bed by 10, and we were away most weekends. Pants and piddles.

The problem with estimated readings is that if the price is going up and your last estimate was too low, you'll be paying for last quarter's gas/electricity at this quarter's price.

And it's gone up a lot - we are currently paying more per month for electricity and gas than we are on our mortgage....

I've been with them since Feb, so think this must really cover feb-oct, but still-they have already had £240 (£30 P/M DD), and it's over the summer so the heating was on 1 (I didn't realise you could turn storage heaters off ). So my bill for the whole year including winter heating would have been close to £2500-argh!!!

How do I opt out of using gas and elec then?

Can you ask them to check if there's a fault at the meter?

SP tried this one with us- took us months to sort out, with me taking meter readings everyday, and noting exactly what appliances were on and how long for etc.

They fitted a machine to the meter for a week and discovered the meter had a fault, had to replace it, AND dig up outside to get to the cables as there was a problem there too (don't ask me what..the first I knew about that was a mini digger parked at the bottom of my drive and a 4ft hole!)

bloody hell paws, that is awful. Have you spoken to them and asked to be able to pay it by installments. Surely they understand no one has that much money just sitting around.
overmydead body, is it really 1 per hour to heat a 2 bed flat? Christ, that has scared me. I usually live in the middle east but have been back in the UK since mid November. Since then DD has had constant coughs/colds and chest and ear infections so for the past few weeks I've pretty much had the heating on 24/7. Starting to panic now!

We just got one for £563 for a quarter. The last bill and this are from readings, not estimates, so it is accurate. I was when it arrived, as I don't often see our leccy bills.

oooh bad luck

the road to hell is paved with estimated readings

I'm going to fight it to high heaven though-there is no way, over two hours a day of proper consumption, i.e. lights, tv and cooker on, we have racked up £1050 in energy between me and dd, no way. We don't live there any more tho so I can't do what invisible man did. If I do installments I wont be able to afford the leccy here, and it will just spiral.

oh fuck

Those estimated readings can be costly. We were stung with a bill of 3,000 this year. (Our business had 5 years of estimated readings - we never noticed).
Can you agree to pay it off in increments - over the period you accrued it IYSWIM.

We got a loan to cover ours. Interest rates aren't too bad now. HTH

But there must be some way for them to calculate the readings surely? I joined them from another company, so they must have had a real reading to start from-they can't have just pulled one out of thin air can they? It just doesn't add up at all-they can just print money otherwise.

I couldn't afford loan repayments as I only have £300 a month for all bills and outgoings, and £153 of that is childcare, so don't have anything left over at all.

Get on to them and ask to pay in installments. They do say on the bill to call if you have problems paying.

I hope it all works out for you.

Ideally when you first move into a new house you should note the meter reading, then contact your preferred supplier and tell them your reading, then you check that against the bill as it should tell you a date and starting meter reading and a date of bill with the up to date meter reading. Now is will be your word against theirs. Also they might charge you if it turns out there is no problem with the meter.

So with energy bills at these levels, I don't know how on earth the government expect us to 'spend our way' out of this recession

if you had storage heaters on 24/7 then yes it would cost ALOT!!!!!!!