electric bill rip off

[petal]

Have just received electric bill which is DOUBLE its normal amount. I know things are going up but my word... have decided to get rid of Sky tv as its codswollop as a way of budgeting and have nagged family even more about our house resembling 'battersea power station'. I wouldn't mind but we have been away for a month collectively!!

[squashysu]

we have been lucky since moving house, as our bills have gone down, but i bet they go up again!!!!! its disgusting the price of heating & electric!

[firstimer1]

well i no a few of the gas companies have put their prices up by 26% on friday so its wood burning for me this winter an an extra jumpers an duevets for the kids

[di]

We got leccie bill yesterday & I was shocked!!Gas came today~it remains unopened!

[Alice]

I thought my gas bill was a rip off.
They charge first X units at high rate the rest at lower rate
BUT when the price went up mid quarter they charged the high rate for X units THEN the high rate for X units from the date of the increase.
Look at yours and see what they have done.
If I can rise up from my apathy I'll challenge them on it.

[lynda66]

i had card meters fitted, i was sick of getting huge bills,and this way i can keep on top of it. and i'm crap at remembering to pay weekly, i even found a company that doesn't charge more for having a meter,

is it an estimated bill petal?? if it's way over, if you give them a correct reading they will send a new bill.

[di]

Alice I'm so pleased you prompted me to open my gas bill!Sorry if i know seem to be gloating but actually pleasantly surprised!(that said it's summer so won't get my hopes up about the next one!!)
Anyone know much about nectar points?!Is 600 worth getting excited about?Don't know if it's what you mean but my "after increase" seems to be lower rate than my "before increase"

[di]

You've all got me in a muddle now!as estimate thought i'd check it out & it's actually reading less than the first initial reading from start of quarter?Was so looking forward to a relaxing evening!Now i'm gonna be trying to convince myself i can do maths & prob be up all night!

[petal]

well, I know lots of people complaining about the hike in rates, there seems to be no ceiling - certainly not on what their shareholders can earn. however, it has made me think about how to cut back on things and perhaps how to conserve energy.

[squashysu]

we have done that, we had cavity wall insulation installed and i will only put the hot water on for an hour in the am and hour in the eve at the mo and the gas for the summer was only �33 - we are also on a water meter and encouraging the kids to shower instead of bath,

in the winter i dont have heating in our bedroom anyway as get too hot, the kids are getting thicker quilts and we are gonna try and conserve as much as possible! i dont like the heating on overnight in the house and only put on for an hour in the am and will try for as less as possible in the eve, hopefully the cavity wall will help!!!

i hate being ripped off!!!

[Two_Sheds]

Apparently the British used to feel comfortable with their homes at 13C. Now we feel chilly if it is at 19C (Mr Sheds just will NOT leave the thermostat at 19 - he waps it up to 30 & sits in his underwear just to annoy me)

The Japanese like their homes at a whopping 24C ! That's hotter than our hottest summer day this year.

[Tracey]

Last winter our gas and electric were double the previous year as we'd come off a fixed rate. Since then the tariffs have increased substantially. I've invested in a shawl.

[jackie j]

Our electric has gone up by �23 a month from �47 to �70 waiting for the gas �55 a month and at the moment the water is �78 a month. eek

[coomber]

We had an electric bill for over �300 which is extremly high for us so OH checked and we had been charged for more than twice what we'd used. They also charged some units at the higher price when they should have been the lower price!
OH phoned, had a moan - we then had a revised bill for �150.00.
It's always worth checking, they'll try anything to get more money out of customers.

[Kristen]

Here's some thing we've done. We've cut our "energy" consumption by 30% in each of the last two years - so down by 50% overall.

Read all meters weekly. I'm not completely *n*l about it, I do the meter reading every Monday morning, but I don't necessarily look at the figures and put my long face on! I do put them in a spreadsheet once in a while, and draw a graph from that. That does two thing for me:

1. Helps us see that we have made real savings.
2. Allows me to tell the Electricity etc. company what the actual meter reading was when the price goes up, and then they have to pro rata the bill accordingly. Ditto when they send an estimated bill. Of course one's readings could be higher than the actual at the time, but I couldn't possibly comment

We have maximised our insulation. Loft insulation is on BOGOFF at B&Q (I think) at the moment. We have also installed cavity fill insulation - which I think was remarkably cheap, considering that we have quite a large house. There was a grant available, which helped.

Increasing your insulation to the maximum (i.e. more than the house-building rulles & regs require) is the number one for payback - solar and wind and all that jazz aren't going to give you any payback anytime soon

All our electric gizmo's are on 4-way extender leads. One switch to turn off kills everything - the Sky recording box is plugged in separately, and left on, but there is a one-switch to kill the TV, the box that plugs into, DVD, etc.

Ditto the computers, one switch deals with PC, screen, printer, and all the other bits.

We have Economy-7 - so our night electricity is 1/4 [I think] the price of day time. (Although I believe our Day rate is slightly higher than normal). We have timers for a number of things so they come on at night - Dish washer, washing machine, and so on. Also a 4-way adapter thingie that has the phone chargers on it. There is a one-hour-boost override button for when we forget, but in the main things get recharged overnight.

(I know that a phone charger plugged in, but charging nothing, uses next-to-nothing, but it is still "something", so having it turned off for all-but a couple of hours in the night does help, and I don't have to get flustered telling the kids to turn their charger's off for the N'th time!)

We have oil for central heating & hot water, but we use Economy-7 timer for immersion during the summer. Running our thumping great big boiler just to heat the hot water is very inefficient (plus our boiler is old and knackered which doesn't help).

I don't suppose Leccy-7 immersion is cheaper than running a Gas boiler, but I don't know for sure.

We have low-wattage bulbs - not all lights, but near-as-dammit. We have a low-wattage external light (can't remember what it is, but something like the street lights, it ain't Sodium, but something similar) outside for security. Also means we don't need to leave the outside lights on when we are coming home late etc.

We have changed some of our devices for better AAA rated ones. But its a painful decision when a device is working fine The previous people left a large American-style Fridge Freezer behind; we find it useful, but it burns several hundred pounds of Leccy p.a., however a new one would be �1,000 or so ... difficult to persuade myself that I should throw the old one away.

having said that, we do Hoover the dust filter thingie every 6 months, and the first time I did that [it was filthy!] its power consumption dropped significantly.

I have to say the kids have become very good at turning things off. None of us are perfect, but the fact that we have cut our Leccy usage by 50% says a lot about how we have been ale to change our habits. I can't think of anything, as a result of doing that, which has effected our "lifestyle".

I drive more frugally too now (God I must be sounding like a boring old f*rt!). That has astonished me; I used to tear about fairly, but on roads I am familiar with [and can therefore anticipate well] my MPG has gone up by 30% - which is pretty significant - albeit only saving a hundred quid or three a year.