Chicken bald back

[bluekarin]

We had a huge shock yesterday when we got the leccy bill and was wondering what the average prices are. It was £188 per month which after lengthy chat by my hubby to them yesterday was brought down to £140 ish. But that is still a huge amount. Or is it? We are only a 3 bed semi detached house.

[abwsco]

Do you mean the monthly DD or how much you actually use?

[bluekarin]

erm, monthy dd I guess. I'm not too sure how much we actually use. Hubby is thinking of getting our meter checked as it is a very old one, but the woman on the phone said not a lot of them are found to be faulty.

[abwsco]

Well, we pay £45 per month with BG on their Websaver 3 tariff. May to August our billed usage was £118.84. They've just this minute been to read the meter so have another bill due in soon. We're a 3 bed semi with an electric oven if that helps.

 

Just adding that we used to pay over £20 more a month but I bought an OWL energy saving monitor and we have cut our usage.

[Christian]

3 bed semi here too. Oil, no gas, so electric cooker (which is on far to often). We pay £45 a month DD - use more in the winter, but less in the summer so it evens out. We are with Southern Electric.

[Lozmk1]

thats a LOT of money.

 

We have had our meter replaced (loooong story) as we have changed from E-on who the previous occupants were with (and ran up £1100 of debt!) to British Gas, our 1st bill was for £4.02 (we only had a kettle and a radio on for 3 months and the odd power tool!) and our last bill- which they have come out and read several times in the interim for june to september was for £50 . i think its so low because realistically we only have the fridge, freezer and alarm clock plugged in and switched on all the time, all applicances are A+ rated, we only have energy saving bulbs in the house (as noisy as they are) and everything gets switched off at the plug when its not in use, we are out 7.30 to 7 monday to friday and not in much on a weekend, we have a gas cooker (gas bills are estimated cos of where the meter is but we will ring a reading thru next year for the next bill- BG wanted to charge us £600 to move the meter 6 inches to the right so it would be in a cupboard! err NO!!) and we live in a 3 bed semi. you guys pay A LOT! thats really bad !i used to live in a flat in a converted victorian house and my flatmate used to leave every light on all the time and have the telly on in the lounge, the radio in the kitchen etc etc etc and our bills were about £110 a 1/4

[Gem_Seb]

We are with Southern Electric and pay £47 a month but on this we run a 4.5ft fishtank with halide lights and various pumps etc all day. We use 10 units a day (we had to monitor it for a week when we had toruble with it last time. They wouldnt even discuss it until we had taken a weeks worth of meter readings!)

 

Apartently the average fr a 3 bed house is 15 - 25 units per day.... They tried charging us £500 for 6 months last time but it was their mistake after we had monitored it for a week and proved them wrong!

[Redwing]

Ours is £124 a month but only because we moved to a new house and the old owner failed to tell us there were TWO switches for the immersion heater and unknowingly we had left it on all winter

 

We are hoping that the 08/09 winter bill has been covered by our DD payments we will be down to about £60 a month as we have electric storage heaters and have very little chance of getting it much lower

 

I would get the meter read (if you havent already) and get the agreement on what your monthly payment actually covers (eg do you have arrears payment like us?)

 

When that is all done get yourself an OWL monitor to see what you are doing wrong

 

If all else fails ask for the meter to be checked. We lived in a flat in Bristol and were paying £100 a month when we asked for the meter to be checked - turns out we were running the massage parlour next door too we didnt get any money back sadly but did have the supplies split and our payments went down to £30 a month, I am not saying that you have a similar problem but it shows how things can be missed!

[BarbaraJ]

We pay 50 a month but i am in all day and don't take things off standby if that uses much gas is alot more at the moment as i have back payments due as the meter wasn't read for ages.

 

should have added 3 bed end of terrace

Edited November 11, 2009 by Guest

[Space Chick]

We have a 4 bed semi (but don't use all the rooms on a daily basis) and we pay 75 a month, although we do run an American Fridge freezer, another big freezer and another fridge, also OH has enough technology to keep the national grid busy, so I am sure that we eat electricity here

 

I also use the tumble drier a lot too

[chelsea]

Gosh, that does sound like rather a lot for electric you poor thing.

 

We were on direct debit for years paying £40 a month for a 2 bed semi. We got so fed up with them keeping our money due to overpaying that last year we cancelled and are now paying by bill quarterly. Typically we had our largest bill ever after Christmas this year for £289 so it took some finding the cash after the festive period. This is with EDF Energy.

 

Our gas is cheap as chips - £20 a month and we are in credit.

[bellekatz]

We pay £120a month DD for elcetric which evens itslef out over the year. We have 4 bedrooms and a conservatory and everything is electric expcept the boiler. Having said that, witha new boiler install last year edf are paying us £800 back as our gas usage has dropped so much.Don't know where all the elcetricity goes though or maybe it's two teenagers and all their stuff

[Gem_Seb]

Our gas is cheap as well! onlyhave gas cooker and hobs which we use everyday and heating which at the moment is on for 2 hrs a day (hr in morning and 1 at night) We pay £18 a month! and are in credit as well!!

[sjp]

I pay £54 DD a month duel fuel

[bluekarin]

Thank you all for your replies. Me thinks we are either paying for too much or more likely, using too much I saw the OWL monitor in Argos and at £34.99 I think it will be a wise buy. I thought you could get a monitor for each appliance to see how much each uses, but I guess that could get quite pricey.

 

Everything in our house is electric; cooker, American fridge freezer (A rated), fan heater in the living room (3kw pretend woodburner), lightbulbs are where possible energy ones, the hot water, an eco oil free heater for upstairs. The immersion heater for the hot water has been the bain of our lives and I think thats what most of the bill goes on. We had the timer replaced and eventually taken away as even switched off the was signs of an electric current I personally think the whole house needs to electrics replacing. But as its a rented property, we can't do that. And before you say what about your landlord, I know, I know. Hubby is very reluctant to go to him about things like this as he thinks, and rightly so, our rent will be upped. Currently we are paying the same price we started with 14 years ago. We did have a gas boiler to heat the hot water and the radiators, but that broke down at the beginning of this year I'm rather dreading this winter tbh.

 

I shall go and get a monitor tomorrow and we shall see. I do wonder how they work though

[Paddy]

A word of advice - just give them a call and see if they can put you on a cheaper tarrif. They often do not advertise their cheaper ones to existing customers. I have done this twice this year - once for my widowed MIL, the man managed to decrease her bills by over a third with an internet account even though she cannot use a computer and with our home one we managed to get it down to half (6p a KW for leccy). Both these deals were cheaper than any comparison website.

[Cooks]

my electric is about £50 a month and I live in a 4 bed detached. I really think thats waaay too much to be honest, it wont hurt getting them to check the meter.

 

My gas is about £57 a month ang British Gas keep trying to put that up even though I am covering all gas used. I tell them no each time they try.

[bluekarin]

My Hubby spoke to them yesterday, at length, and they changed the payment from monthly DD to pay by bill, which cut the bill by £40 odd quid. I'm getting an OWL monitor to see just how much is being used and we can go from there.

[chickric]

I saw the OWL monitor in Argos and at £34.99 I think it will be a wise buy.

 

I shall go and get a monitor tomorrow and we shall see. I do wonder how they work though

 

I have just ordered one from their own site £29.95. Here Seems quite easy to fit.

[Redwing]

Your 3kw fan heater will make the meter spin like a catherine wheel so if you are using it a lot it would be a good idea to replace it

[abwsco]

I assume you've checked that the reading on the bill is correct. I've heard of so many people lately who haven't checked and it's been either wrongly recorded ie numbers wrong way around or just over estimates. Another thing to check is that the MR's on previous bills have been carried over correctly as well.

[Blackrocksrock]

4 bed bungalow here - no gas - electric cooker, dishwasher, tumble drier always used, washing machine etc and so many gadgets and gizmos too - it is £184 for this quarter newly in and I have a multifuel (wood) stove which heats the central heating so at the moment until I get my oil boiler soon I hope we have no more bills for fuel!!

[Guest]

£200 a month, electric Aga - on a timer, hot tub - allegedly £5 a week and storage heaters for a large 2 bed bungalow (annexe) which, according to my OWL are NOT taking all their input in cheap time! I have asked Mum to get someone in to look at them and she hasn't

 

The owl helped us bring this down - the AGA timer wasn't right and the owl highlighted that and has now highlighted the storage heaters. We brought it down so much that they IGNORED the meter reading that the meter reader took as they ASSUMED it was wrong and only corrected this when I sent in my reading and it tallied with his.

 

The OWL paid for itself within a week.

 

We have no gas and as I won't use the heating for the large 4 bed detatched part of the house we use about £300 of oil a year. I use a lot of wood and suppliment this with a halogen heater right next to me, these are cheap to run, the owl confirms this.

[bluekarin]

I saw the OWL monitor in Argos and at £34.99 I think it will be a wise buy.

 

I shall go and get a monitor tomorrow and we shall see. I do wonder how they work though

 

I have just ordered one from their own site £29.95. Here Seems quite easy to fit.

 

I was going to get one from Argoose, but I have just ordered one from OWL website, as even though the Argoose catalogue says its £34.99 its actually £37.99!

[Reikiranf]

We live in a 4 bed semi & pay £95 a month for electricity, which I think is a lot considering that our heating, hot water & hob are gas and every bulb in the house is an energy saving one except for the cooker hood & all our appliances are A rated at the very least

 

We have an owl monitor and you do get a bit obsessive we ended up getting rid of a halogen lamp that we had in the kitchen & don't put the cookerhood light on much now as the amount they used up was quite scary, we also switch lots of things off at the socket and don't bother having the microwave clock on either, we are so sad it's got to the point that while we're sitting in the lounge we know by the usage what appliances are on in the kitchen It is good to have though and even the kids become good at switching things off. We also have an intellisave plug that the pc, monitor & printer are plugged into and when the pc is switched off the printer and other bits are switched off too