Gas payments

[igenlode]

British Gas: "Hello, here's your energy statement.

Total energy costs (excluding VAT) £1.16
VAT at 5% £0.06
Total energy costs (including VAT) £1.22
You've paid us £126.00

We will regularly review your monthly payment of £42.00 to make sure you're on track to cover your expected energy use" :-P

Comments

[watervole]

How come the use is so low? I mean, no heating this time of year, but sounds like your hot water use may be even lower than ours?

[igenlode]

I bathe intermittently (most of the time I don't have time for more than a quick wipedown with a flannel to remove the sweat) and do a good deal of cooking along with the concomitant washing-up -- I did wonder if the bizarre bill could be the result of getting a new and very expensive boiler, but in fact according to the small print on the back it is simply the result of having inaccurate estimated meter readings corrected by reference to actual readings :)

I can't make head or tail of a lot of it, but basically they have cancelled and refunded the standing charge (?why? surely I pay for the same number of days whatever the meter reading?) and the number of units used over multiple periods, and substituted a revised charge for each that was sometimes higher and sometimes lower...

So far as I can make out I have *actually* used around 197 units over the last six months; I have just been overcharged for what I did use, such that my net balance over the period was only £1.22 in debit. I think.

I still think that monthly payments of £42 are self-evidently far too high -- I paid them £126 to cover a period in which I only used £63 worth of gas, including the December–March period when the central heating was coming on from time to time -- but I expect they will revise it down again. Last time they built up such a massive surplus that it went down to £10 per month for a while. It would really be better if they could work out a consistent monthly direct debit by adding up my average yearly usage and dividing it by twelve, but apparently that seems to be beyond them :p