Nearly 1.3m energy customers overcharged by £102m because of company billing errors, research shows

This happens to me every year. One year my bill jumped from £35 a month to £200+ without notice.

The problem I have is that I live in an apartment complex and my only heating capability is through wall-mounted electric fan heaters. These things fucking eat electricity. The year I moved in I was paying £35 a month and doing regular meter readings to make sure it was roughly accurate - it was about perfect through spring and autumn, but a bit too high through summer (when my place gets uncomfortably hot) but I figured it’d work out overall.

That winter I had two friends stay with me for a couple of months. They used the fan heaters every day, opened windows all the time, and basically had no concept of being energy efficient. The bill came in at something like £800 for that quarter, and my monthly bill went up to £200 a month. I elected to pay it in a lump sum and then reduce my bill back down to £35-ish a month.

That worked nicely, but whatever mechanism they use to determine my bill seems to always factor it in. Every time there’s an automated change in my bill, it shoots up astronomically despite my being fine in terms of paying the bill each month. A few times a year I have to call them up when it gets increased to get it reduced again, and the people I speak to always agree with me about it and never give me any trouble.

I always wonder how many other people get caught by this sort of thing and never correct it though.

/r/unitedkingdom Thread Link - independent.co.uk