Checking electricity bill

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Miseméféin

Registered User
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Hi,

I wonder does anyone go through their electricity bills to the extent they are calculating where the company is getting their figures from and ensuring they all match the stated usage figures etc?

I moved to a new 12 month tariff recently with the same provider. I looked at my last 3 electricity bills the other day out of interest to see if I was on a better or worse tariff now. I noticed they made a mistake in the changeover bill, where they calculated a "product discount" of 2% on the new tariff portion of the bill rather than 21%.

This was so obvious as it stated 2% and the calculation opposite was 2%. It made me wonder though if I should be trying to calculate all the actual figures to see if they are making mistakes elsewhere.

I'm doing my best to get back into a money saving mindframe so I'd be curious if this type of thing has ever saved people money. I once tried to make sense of our mortgage statement by calculating it all out but in that case I found it overly confusing.

Thanks!
 
You should certainly check that the bill is based on the readings on the meter - you should keep a record of the readings regularly

Then you should check that the bill is correctly calculated from the information on your contract.

Never assume that utility companies get their billing correct.

Also, you can check your electricity use by estimating your usage for example - for a washing machine multiply kWh used per wash by number of washes per week or month. All the information needed can be found on the web - google electricity usage
 
Thank you JPD. I think I'm going to enjoy this! Not the contacting the company part that I have to do anyway due to their mistake but the calculations part.
 
Some good housekeeping. Especially in a pandemic and all my meters are inside. It takes the uncertainty of of high bills randomly turning up.
 
So I've looked closer at the last 5 or 6 bills and it seems there are mistakes in all of them. They go both ways in terms of who benefits on first glance so they may have been trying to balance out previous mistakes. I'll do a more thorough examination once the new ink arrives for my printer and I can look at it off the screen.

I've gone years without printer ink and "moneysaving" has pushed me to spend the money on it! The irony!
 
Miseméféin said:
So I've looked closer at the last 5 or 6 bills and it seems there are mistakes in all of them. They go both ways in terms of who benefits on first glance so they may have been trying to balance out previous mistakes.
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What mistakes have you found? I doubt your meter is read every time rather ever other bill is estimated which can mean regular corrections. Your bill should state if it was based on an actual reading or an estimate. Estimates tend to be based on national averages so can be wide of the mark depending on your personal uses.


Who's your provider? Are you on a level pay plan?
 
I was with Bord Gais a few years ago for Electricity and Gas, supposed to be getting some dual fuel deal. But they calculated the deal as about 6 different discounts on the bill, and not once did they get it right. I spent hours on the phone to their useless agents explaining how percentages work. I would never switch back to them now regardless of whether they're the cheapest.
 
Of all things that drive me insane it's the electricity and gas bills. Looking at one from SSEaitricity I can't make head nor tail of it. I've got different rates for different dateson the one bill and even the standing charges. No idea how they allocate which units to which rate when the rates change. Current rate is .1907. With a note on the bill: From 1 Oct 2019 there are changes to the Pass-Through Charges element of your tariff. How is anyone supposed to know what that means. How would you argue they had applied the wrong units to the higher charge.

And I found out last month that the Gas had rejected a meter reading I'd sent because it was ........ too high. But did they inform me, no a bit of it. And they were supposed to phone me back to set my rate and never did.
 
I've got different rates for different dateson the one bill and even the standing charges. No idea how they allocate which units to which rate when the rates change.
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They estimate it, the same way they do estimated bills. So they work out your normal daily usage from past readings and multiply it the by number of days on the old tariff in that billing period etc. If you had only recently switched to them when the rates changed they can use the annual kwh usage figure you'd have provided when signing up to estimate it, or if that isn't provided use the national average annual usage figures to give a (very rough) figure.
 
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Bronte said:
How would you argue they had applied the wrong units to the higher charge
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You'd need to have taken a meter reading on the day the rates changed and compare this with you bill. Or submit it to them and they'll use that reading instead of an estimate.
 
We all have a camera on our phones now. I just take a picture randomly when passing the meter. The phone will keep the date. Also most companies can be signed up to online. Some are better than others at giving you totals but al least all the bills are there so you can do all the maths at the same time.
 
skrooge said:
What mistakes have you found? I doubt your meter is read every time rather ever other bill is estimated which can mean regular corrections. Your bill should state if it was based on an actual reading or an estimate. Estimates tend to be based on national averages so can be wide of the mark depending on your personal uses.


Who's your provider? Are you on a level pay plan?
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It is an estimate a lot of the time, you are correct.

Well, for example, one time they have added in two lines in the bill for corrections of previous reading. Both are marked with the same date range. Neither give details of the correction, just a figure in €.

The first section with the correction is in the section with standard rate charges where they appear to be correcting an underestimated bill (€23.48).

The second section with the correction is their discount section which at that time added up to a 23% discount on the standard charges. However, the correction here being charged back is much higher than the standard rate correction (€36.20).

In the same bill, the rest of the discount section is being calculated against a standard rate total of over €300 when the standard rate total in that same bill was under €200.

I don't think the other bills have as many confusing parts as this one but there is eg the one with the wrong % for the product discount and one with two different kw charges in the same bill although it was not a period which included a change of contract, and going by prior bills I don't have two different standard charges being charged for any other reason. Looking now I'm not 100% if there are mistake in the other bills but I will be going through them all thoroughly once I can print them.

I am with Iberdrola. I don't know what a level pay plan is. I know the name of my plan but when I click on the section of the website which should provide details of the plan it is a broken link. I will email them to request my plan details.
 
Just to add, why would I need to refund a discount that would never have existed since the original error was an underestimated bill? So no matter what that figure is, I shouldn't be refunding a discount because of an incorrect estimate, unless that estimate had over-charged me.
 
Miseméféin said:
I don't know what a level pay plan is
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They average out the bills over the year. I'm suspicious of them and have just gone to some effort to come off mine. I suspect they underestimate them a bit so you end up owing them more if you want to switch. 'Twould be a deterrent, wouldn't it? Maybe I'm a bit paranoid. o_O
 
Cricketer said:
They average out the bills over the year. I'm suspicious of them and have just gone to some effort to come off mine. I suspect they underestimate them a bit so you end up owing them more if you want to switch. 'Twould be a deterrent, wouldn't it? Maybe I'm a bit paranoid. o_O
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I've usually had the opposite experience and was due a refund after switching. It may depend on the time of year you switch, as level pay bills in Winter are below what the actual usage is and vice versa in Summer, so if switching in Winter months you might owe them money.
 
Thanks Cricketer. I was on that type of plan before, maybe when I was with SSE. I did find it a bit of a headache but it was handy knowing what would come out most months
 
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