What ho one and all,

Have just received an e-mail from my energy company, Bulb, that they are going to increase my monthly payment to cover what they feel is an appropriate monthly usage as I am apparently, underpaying.

So I have had a look at the bills for the last three years for July, Aug, Sept. Both gas and electricity are within what I could term reasonable variations with one exception and that is 2021 Sept gas usage. I always give a customer reading when they send the reminder; Bulb estimate for Sept is OK, but my reading is around 60kWh greater than the estimate and is virtually double for Sept of the past few years.

I have checked the meter and my reading now is only a few kWH above the current bill, so my reading was correct. There is no gas smell anywhere.

Is it possible that the meter is giving a false reading? The meter was installed by probably SGN when we built.

Who do I contact to check? SGN or Bulb?

Thanks and toodle pip

Having been with SSE for eons I decided to switch supplier after doing some research using Uswitch. I signed up with Bulb and gave them my estimate for our annual electricity consumption, which has been reasonably stable now for many years. This was in late summer. As soon as the winter months approached and the monthly readings naturally increased, this caused a knee-jerk reaction from Bulb who apparently started to panic because the regular direct debit was not sufficient to keep pace with the cost of the electricity we were using. To be fair to them they only "suggested" increasing the D/D rather than instructing me to do so, but I wrote back to decline their offer as I know that during the summer months the D/D would be more than ample to cover the cost.

Rex - Do they pay interest on the few hundred quid you are in credit? If not then if you take a few hundred quid from each customer by unnecessarily putting a hike in the monthly payments then that represents an interest free loan that could be quite useful.

Over here where you pay a fixed average sum monthly reconciled by an annual meter reading you can request an adjustment if you think it is out of line with reality and if your request is reasonable against the facts it will be approved.

We're with OVO, they're similar, always need a float. They pay 3% on it, so seems ok to me. They just seem to make the DD number up - we've been with them 10 years, and the DD has varied between £6 and £100 a month somewhat randomly over that period, and recently accumulated a somewhat ridiculous £1500 in the float. The DD is £6 at the moment, but given our V2G (ie. we buy cheap elec, sell it back at a profit), £6/mo is probably about right over the year. I guess our atypical energy pattern confuses their algorithm, so expect that they will push the DD up again shortly !

I don't really understand why you don't pay in arrears for what you have used - it would focus the mind on energy use. Bit of googling...I notice that OVO variable tarrif can be paid in arrears for used energy - is there a reason for why one tarrif type can, another cannot?

Posted By: RexBut their DIY test relates mainly to electricity in switching things off. If I turn off the gas, I can heat the DHW with electricity, but don't want to cook with a box of matches.

Your cooker isn't normally switched on, is it? I don't think they ask you to switch the gas off, that wouldn't help if there was a leak in the meter or pipework downstream of the valve. The idea is to turn all appliances off, so you can see if the meter stops as well.

Posted By: WillInAberdeenI'm with Bulb and keep my account in debit

It took a fair few years before they got around to enforcing the always-in-credit term in their contract.

Posted By: RobL
They pay 3% on it, so seems ok to me.

and recently accumulated a somewhat ridiculous £1500 in the float.

At 3% in a secure environment, thats a nice little earner. If youve got cash savings elsewhere might be worth doing what you can to trigger an increase in DD😁