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Ridiculous Electricity Bills! (?)
SpongeCake
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Alrighty, so I'm in a rented flat, been living here for a year but my electricity supplier has fucked up basically every bill they've ever sent me one way or another, so I have no frame of reference for how much a standard bill in this place should be costing me.
There's an immersion heater for my water which is a timed, off-peak dealy, and the only central heating is with wall-panel, electric radiators. There's no gas at all. It's a single bedroom flat, with one bathroom, one living room/open plan kitchen and a teeny tiny hall. I live alone and work all day, so the flat is completely empty between 8am and 6pm. The building is pretty well heated, so I don't have the radiators turned on often and when they are on they're timed for a couple of hours in the morning and a couple in the evening. When I'm in the flat I have my PC running frequently, though in exclusion to a TV or anything similar (if one is on, the other is off).
My latest electricity bill, for the period between the 8th of October and the 12th of January is £441.78.
This seems high to me.
My electricity supplier disagrees.
They are telling me that it's something I'm doing wrong rather than something they've done wrong. Arguing about this with them is a fucking nightmare and I'm tempted to just say that they're right and pay the damn bills.
What I need to know is, is this bill within the realms of possibility given my situation, or is this so outlandishly high that there's definitely something wrong that I need to keep pestering my supplier about?
There's an immersion heater for my water which is a timed, off-peak dealy, and the only central heating is with wall-panel, electric radiators. There's no gas at all. It's a single bedroom flat, with one bathroom, one living room/open plan kitchen and a teeny tiny hall. I live alone and work all day, so the flat is completely empty between 8am and 6pm. The building is pretty well heated, so I don't have the radiators turned on often and when they are on they're timed for a couple of hours in the morning and a couple in the evening. When I'm in the flat I have my PC running frequently, though in exclusion to a TV or anything similar (if one is on, the other is off).
My latest electricity bill, for the period between the 8th of October and the 12th of January is £441.78.
This seems high to me.
My electricity supplier disagrees.
They are telling me that it's something I'm doing wrong rather than something they've done wrong. Arguing about this with them is a fucking nightmare and I'm tempted to just say that they're right and pay the damn bills.
What I need to know is, is this bill within the realms of possibility given my situation, or is this so outlandishly high that there's definitely something wrong that I need to keep pestering my supplier about?
SpongeCake on
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Having your home at <50 all day while you're not there and turning it up to 75 could probably get you close to that in heating costs alone. But I'm not sure how everything works over there and your average costs being higher or lower than ours over here. That still seems extraordinarily high unless you have a big house with lots of space.
The radiators in my living room have been broken and entirely off since February. Only have one in the bedroom which runs for about two hours in the morning and two hours in at night (which I've turned off completely since getting this damn bill).
There is no way it could be that high. Ever.
Is that 260 £Sterling or US$ ?
US. I also have gas heat, and it's pretty cold here (~15F today).
I can see many mistakes possibly being made:
1) They read someone elses' meter and thought it was yours (in which case, find YOUR meter (your landlord should know) and write down that number, and compare it with what they have.
2) Someone could be acquiring your electricity and/or gas illegally. (In which case, you can find out by turning off all of the circuit breakers in your house, going back to your meter, and seeing if it continues to move... if it does and you're sure you tripped all your breakers, either your landlord or another tenant is using electricity on your meter for... something.)
Hopefully this helps.
Flat = Apartment, yes.
And it's funny you should say that... When I first moved in they did exactly that - charged me for my neighbour's electricity. Allegedly they sorted out the issue and insist that the meter they're charging me based on now is mine and not someone else's. A few months back I also got bills for the other neighbour. Every time I mention the possibility that they're still looking at the wrong meter they refuse to accept that it could be that, which is why I want to be sure it's stupidly high before wasting my breath arguing with their relentless bullshit.
The circuit-breaker idea is a fantastic one. It's going to be a dull weekend but I'm sure as hell going to give it a shot.
That said, I've lived in an apartment with electric heat. Our bills in the summer ran around $20-$30. Our bills in the winter were as high as $200. We kept the apartment at 64 Fahrenheit in the winter, and left the heat off during the day.
$200 a quarter?
The meter readings are usually taken, not estimated and I've given them a few myself. As far as I'm aware they're accurate for that meter, so it's not a problem with the way the meter is being read.
Different companies charge different prices for things. Typical per month can be from 300-700 KwH for an apartment and if it's a house can easily hit 1000 kwH depending what you have.I use about 400 KwH a month for an apartment but I don't pay for the building heat (which adds up) and don't pay for the water heater.
That does sound pretty high though in my view (as I work for an elecrticy/water company).
Granted our electricity may be a bit cheaper than most other places (MB is almost exclusively Hydroelectric power, and produces much more than we actually use).
Apparently I'm running through 1300kwH a month.
Including 400kwH of night units. During the night. When everything is turned off.
During the billed period, I had a single radiator turned on for a few hours a day, for a total of 10 days. I know this for an absolute fact because I'm one of those cheap people who would rather wear a sweater than turn the heating on and one of those lazy people who would rather wear two sweaters than call the landlord and get him to fix the radiators.
Maybe you just have some neighbor mooching off you juice. Turn off the breakers like suggest and see if it still runs.
And everything isn't completly off. You always have hot water, your food is always cold.
Do you have newer appliances? Older ones? The older they are, the worse they will be for power.
Advise is to check the meter yourself to make sure they aren't screwing up the readings.
£. It's 441£. That's about 900 or more USD if I'm not mistaken. 300$ a month for a single bedroom flat where he uses VERY little heating and spends more than half the day out of the house or sleeping? That is high.
441 UK£ Sterling = 958.80026 U.S. Dollars
says google
I got an electriclty bill in a similar living situation for £300 and a bit for a quarter, and it turned out that the meter was broken and recording all the electricity used at peak rate.
I think your meter may be broken.
EDIT: also some of you guys seem to have really expensive electricity or are using a shitload of power.
Man, I wish the pound was that strong. By my calculations it's about 650 USD, but yeah the point stands.
I going to administer the circuit-breaker test tomorrow and see what happens.
"My" meter was still ticking away.
The meter above "mine" was the only one in the cupboard with a tiny LED not lit up. I took a reading from that. Waited 15 and took another. No change.
I flipped everything back on. Waited 15. LED is lit up and the meter is ticking away.
I am about to crack some fucking skulls.
Major thanks to everyone for the help here, you've managed to be more useful in one day than my electricity supplier has in 12 months. It's e-on UK, for the record.
Update edit: Phoned my supplier, finally got through to someone who can actually do something. They finally fucking agree that I've been charged under the wrong meter and have put my account under review - no charges for anything until they sort it out. I can expect a full refund for the overcharging and it should be sorted in 6 - 8 weeks. I wish I'd posted this topic a year ago.
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Your bill seems a bit high, especially given you say you don't use the heating that much. what supplier are you with?
At my last building all the meters were clearly marked for which apartment they belonged to.
Also hopefully you can get a big fat refund, you must have been paying for like 4-5x what you were actually using
edit- i see you solved it, hooray! but look into getting energy efficient bulbs, by dad says they lowered his bill by so much when he switched to using them
600 fucking quid.
That would be e-on
If your experience is anything like mine, they'll try and talk you into just crediting it to your account and then taking minimal payments until it's back to normal. Don't let them pull that bullshit, they're holding a large amount of your money. Complain until they send you a cheque.
Woot! I'm so glad it helped! Yep, the circuit breaker test is pretty much a dead ringer for finding out what's going on. In fact, I'm highly suspicious of the fact that this company didn't tell you to do this earlier. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but dismissing claims like the one you had is an easy way for them to generate revenue.
Okay, maybe that's too paranoid... but fuck those guys anyways.
Well done!
This is an excellent point.
You're a life-saver mate - and I absolutely agree, I'm astounded that nobody along the line ever suggested trying it and even had the audacity to send me a letter saying my electricity costs were completely normal for my situation. Rest assured I will be sending more angry letters before this is over.
The most shocking thing about this whole situation is that for the first three months I was living here they were actually charging me using the correct meter. Then out of the blue they decided to start using a completely different one without even telling me why.
Glad it's sorted.
Aye, that's what I'm afraid of in this situation. But I'm glad we at least got it sorted as to what was happening.
One problem where I live (in Florida) is that your electricity companies will actually estimate your usage and charge you accordingly. It doesn't matter how much you actually use, your bill will double or triple suddenly and then several months down the line it plummets to less than 1/4 of what your actual usage really is. They don't bother checking the meters every month.
If you're not living someplace like the Midwest or Northeast in the U.S. (and I don't think anywhere in Britain is anywhere near that cold) with your heater set to 75, there's no fucking way that's your bill.