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]

At least we seem to have found the prob, so I know it is not simply a price hike, so it is a problem, therefore it is solvable! I am so much happier now!

Go straight to the energy regulator thingy - whose name ecapes me - they will advise you.

We had 9 months of this with NPower [hooligans] in the end bill was halved adn we agreed to pay.

Also insist it's passed to a dispute section immediatley, not dealt with by the genral call centre. That's a priority.

Do this tommorrow!

Sorry hadn't read to the end of thread!!!

Storage heaters seem a liability - we had those blasted things too.

Paws - you need to go to the Citizens advice with this. They might be right in what you owe but you need help handling it. They might also help you find a cheaper supplier.

FWIW - we have an energy monitor called an "Owl". It tells us what we are using enery wise. I have it on our mantlepiece and you can see it all the time, if it goes over 4/5p per hour I know I am running something other than the tv and lights. (we have CH so cheaper than storage) but if it pops up to 6p per hour then I know something else is on.

Check everything you put on standby, even our washing machine uses power when off so I now switch it off at the socket. Same with electric hob and oven, tv and radios, even the pc or mobiles charging when they are full. It all adds up. We have saved loads since we started monitoring our use.

The other day it the "Owl" made me realise I had left the heating on during the day. DD and I can put a cardi on no need to heat in the day unless it is really cold here.

I'm on storage heaters and I have the input up high and the output quite low at the minute because it's so cold. I'm a flippin crazed person about what I'm using though as I've only just moved into my flat with my dd. So I'm turning off everything I possibly can! Really worried what my bill will be as I'm only paying £40.00 a month and am worried it'll be really high. Haven't had my first bill yet.

Have just taken and sent in a reading after reading this.

Very sorry for you, what a bugger.

looks interesting

We're on 6 input and 1 output here, but at old house were 4 and 4 as I didn't know how to use them, but from oct to dec there was no billing prob and was paying the right amount (Was with British Gas). Then with both set to 1 we get a bill for 4 times the amount! Have ordered an owl this evening-am v exctied!

I had a bill for £3000 for a quarter a bit back . Was wrong so they resent it and I got one for £8000 then, haha.

The muppets had been taking a 4 digit reading from a 5 digit meter for a few years so all our bills had been wrong from when we moved in. They told me they would try and work out a reasonable bill but only if I agreed to it.

So what happened in the end hotpot? Were you as freaked out as me?

They came up with a reasonable bill in the end, on the low side amazingly so I agreed to it.

Good luck with yours.

Hi OP. First of all, I am very jealous of your night energy charges. We?re not on Economy 7, but something called Total Heating Total Control, where heating is charged at the equivalent of a low night time rate. Our heating rate is nearly 8p a unit!!

£8 for night time energy over 3 months is clearly a nonsense. If it helps I have summised the following for our house:

Electric water heating uses 6 or 7 units a day
A small modern-ish storage heater on minimum will use about the same, but you say your are set to 6 input? So say 10 units a day per heater.
You don?t say how many storage heaters you have, but say 3 ? then your total nightime usage would be in the region of 36 to 40 units per day. For argument?s sake that?s around £1.50 a day. So you?re looking at about £120 for the 3 months for night time charges ? it would have been about £22.50 for just water.
If your storage heaters are old this could be maybe half as much again.
[Woe is me, the same usage would cost us nearly £240 for 3 months just for heating, plus all the standard priced energy Hence we only use one storage heater.]

Then if your average daytime use is, say, a modest 10 units a day you can add another £1.60 per day. 90 days = approx £144. Total approx £264 for 3 months.

If you?ve only been paying £30 per month, when you?ve actually been using closer to £90, and probably more through winter, then it?s easy to see how these charges have arisen.

BTW, when we had Economy 7 our storage heaters automatically came on when the night rate kicked in. Now they come on whenever the electricity company decides they will (satellite switch).

We pay £120 a month ? after the price rises it just covers our usage and we have big arrears from using an old storage heater in our last house.

Sorry, I just posted that then realised that you use gas to heat your water. So you can strike out £20 odd quid from the 3 months figures - not a huge amount really. It still looks to me like you've used at least £50 a month more than you've been paying for.

Pawslikepaddington have scanned through this post as i am in a hurry but will check back later tonight.

If you are in a new place or about to go to a new place DO NOT STAY WITH THE COMPANY who you have the bill with.

Reason, I used to work for npower, if you stay with them they will put a prepayment meter in to force you to pay the debt. If you are not with them you are a closed account and you can make a payment arrangement with them.

I used to debt collect on live accounts (budget scheme or prepayment meter) and closed accounts (transfer debt to a live account if customer still with us, or payment arrangement if not)

From a company's point of view a guaranteed sum coming in every month to reduce a debt is better than making an arrangement that the customer cannot afford and stops paying within a few months.

They may ask you to fill in a income and expenditure form CAB can help you with this, they often bump stuff up so that you appear to have less money as you cannot budget for everything like birthday cards and the likes.

I will check back on this later.

To everyone who ever gets a bill with an estimated reading, read the meter and give that reading to the elec/gas company even if it is very similar to their guess.

Also when you move into a property write down the meter readings somewhere permanent so in a diary or address book. If you put it on a slip of paper chances are you will probably lose it. Then when you move out do the same.

this happened to us: we had been paying by direct debit, kept getting estimated quarterly bills saying we were in credit, then suddenly last quarter we get a bill based on a reading and were £600 behind. it turned out the bills had been hugely underestsimated all year and so we'd got one big massive catchup bill.
what is worth checking is whether, if you think this is actually for usage built up back to last february, they have billed you for it ALL at the rate applicable right now. gas and electric prices have gone up massively over the year and often (as happened to us) if they are levying a catchup bill the company will just charge you for the lot at the most recent - and conveniently for them, highest - tariff.
when i queried this with our provider (atlantic) they instantly agreed to charge some of it at the old rate as it had clearly been incurred earlier in the year - that knocked £150 off the bill at a stroke. so worth asking.
sorry if i havent explained this very well am posting in a rush please post back if this is of any use and you need to know anything else