Gas and Electricity.

[Corranga]

Been paying 75 quid a month for lecky for our little 1 bedroom place, no gas here.
Erica wondered why her bank account seemed slightly off, turns out we were £220 in credit and they'd refunded!

It'll all change next month when we move to a 4/5 bed house though

Chris

[colintinto]

We're about £85 in electricity and £150 ish a month in pellets for heating.

Could get the electricity a big cheaper but decided to go with Good Energy as all their power comes from renewable resources. Makes me feel slightly less guilty about all the non renewable resources I consume

[campbell]

Could get the electricity a big cheaper but decided to go with Good Energy as all their power comes from renewable resources. Makes me feel slightly less guilty about all the non renewable resources I consume

Good job on the pellets. Sadly my understanding is that we are all paying for the renewables nonsense already in any case, via the subsidies to get windyfarms up and running etc. So I don't feel the least bit guilty, indeed I feel a bit narked actually!

[Dark]

We're about £60/month for electric (6,500kWh/year) and £120/month for LPG (3,000 litres/year).
Most of the LPG gets used during the winter for central heating, usage during the summer for hot water seems minimal.
House is ~5 years old, timber frame construction, well insulated, with 5 bedrooms.
I think our usage is above average because I work at home most days with several computers, NAS box & lots of cups of tea!

Cheers, Mark

[ed]

We are about £40 per month for Electricity and about £100 a month for heating oil.

[Stevoraith]

For what it's worth we're around £100 combined but we're just in a 3-bed semi.

I recently went through the whole 'changing supplier' dance.

Was on a capped deal with Scottish power and decided I was paying too much for the peace of mind so switched to an online deal from Scottish gas.
Worked out I'd save about £30 a month.

Then the price rises were announced! Should still be quids in though.

Best thing though was that I had a Scottish power 'representative' at my door trying to persuade me to stay with them.
He asked if I would stay if they could reduce my payments from £110 to £80 a month. I said yeah, that would be great, but how could they reduce my prices when everyone elses were going up.

Turns out they wouldn't reduce my tariff, they'd just charge me less per month which of course couldn't cover what I was actually using and would leave me with a large debt.
And he couldn't understand why I didn't think that was a good idea

[Kev]

We're roughly about £100-£120 a month for electric which is everything, heating + hot water etc for a 4 bed detached house. Upstairs isn't particularly well insulated, which is getting redone this year, so hopefully save a few £££ there.

Before I put in the GSHP we used to only heat the living room, bathroom and our bedroom as we had panel/storage heaters and were paying about £150 a month and now I pay less and have the whole house warm. It'll be even better next year when the renewable heating incentive kicks in for domestic users.

[pete]

Holy thread resurrection.

It#s happened again. This time because the meter went round the clock - so the supplier started guessing my electric.

Thing is I'm not very observant and they've been over charging me.

2700 in credit. Or 4600. I don't understand my bill.

[Mikie711]

We often end up in large credit balance just before a bill but £2700 - 4600 is a bit excessive

As we found out it can be a PITA getting money back from them. We are with Scottish Hydro BTW.

[renmure]

A topical resurrection:

My Electricity DD is now £210/month from last month as opposed to the £140 it was back in 2011. Oil is unchanged.

[pete]

They've been ramping up the electric - charging roughly double (and rising) what we've been using despite having meter readings. OK perhaps I'm not great at sending in meter readings but I've sent some in!

[robin]

We are with Spark Energy - shady bunch but cheap. When we went to them, they were 25% cheaper than EON (for our usage - YMMV). They continued to take the same amount as EON - I didn't clock it at the time.

After a year they sent me no statements, but they did send a letter saying that they were putting their prices up. Then I got a letter saying that my DD for next year was, wait for it, exactly the same as it had been all along. I thought that cannot be right - they've put the prices up but DD is the same? So I called them. Despite already having plenty of meter readings, they took another one and worked out my average usage was ~£100 less than my DD. So I said "OK, you owe me ~£1200 then?" - "I didn't say that!" she says ... so I was very confused about how on the one hand she could know what I should have been paying but doesn't know what they owe me but she point blank refused to discuss it with me.

Anyway, seeing as how they never sent me a statement I figured they would never send me one - thus I reduced my monthly DD to £5 ... I guess they will come looking for their money one day, but in the meanwhile it may as well be in my bank account than theirs

I would say avoid Spark unless your bills are huge as the hassle of dealing with them will outweigh the cash you'll save. EON were excellent to deal with, but not competitive on price at the time - I am hoping they will be competitive come my next trip to USwitch so I can escape from Spark!

Cheers,
Robin

[pete]

This was First Utility.
Apparently they are experiencing unprecedented call volumes (and have been for months). I've tried taunting them on twitter, which is sport but although they pledge to reply they don't.
I've tried emailing them but they don't reply.
I've tried calling them, but it takes an hour or so to get through.
I've 3 weeks to go until the regulator will take up my cause. It's not like I won't get the money in the end, (and TBH it was a pleasant surprise) but it's sport to try and get more cash from them.

[rossybee]

Have tried uSwitch?

We did, (moved to the frenchies) and knocked around 30-40% off our gas & lekky (was circa £4k pa) and got a case of fine wines delivered unexpectedly one day

but to be fair, I have made some efficiency improvements over the last few years such as 170mm glasswool under the ground floor and renovated the top floor, using kingspan, new he boiler with unvented/pressurised hot water system. House is approx 90yrs old on three floors, detached.

[neil]

Does the underfloor insulation make a big difference? I've been thinking about it for a while but haven't got round to it