This happened to us at a time when the cost of services was doubling so I was really shocked to get a bill for £1500 still outstanding on top of the regular payments made each month.
Our electricity meter is outside on the wall to be accessed by the meter reader but there was a time when no one seemed to come around and as I could not access the box because it requires a special key, I could not phone in my usage.
I did suspect that they were deliberately saving on manpower for outlying districts like ours in the hope that we would phone in our readings and then there would be no need for someone to come around. However they greatly underestimated out electricity because another person had been added to our household, so when they did do a reading it was a big shock to discover how much was outstanding.
Since then they have read the meter twice a year and I do not get estimated bills any more.
The other kind of electricity meter is the monitor that tells you how much electricity is being used and calculates the cost as it is being used. When I phoned my supplier recently to discuss my excessive bill, he suggested I had one of these meters to monitor our usage to find out what items were the most costly to run. Then as a comparison to turn them off and see how much we saved.
Firstly I needed to read the meter and phone in the details then they would send me this monitor free of charge. I am still waiting for the key to be sent to me so I can open the box and read the meter, but as I am going ahead with switching suppliers this might never happen.
We have thought for some time it would be a good idea to have one of these monitors to regulate our electricity supply but felt we could not really justify the cost of buying one. When I get to the point of arranging the contract with our new supplier I will negotiate for an electricity meter as part of the deal.
When talking to our electricity supplier the sales person told me he had one for a time but he became so obsessive about monitoring everything he had to get rid of it, it was ruining his life.
The National Audit Office in a report last year said that the typical household could save roughly thirty percent of their energy bills or, around £280, if they adopted the cost-effective measures available to them to reduce their energy use.
