I’m having a bit of a fight with Scottish Power at the moment. They’re absolutely useless at billing us meaning we had bills that were tiny for ages then suddenly shot through the roof as they claimed they were billing us incorrectly.

I’ve been looking at our consumption for the last couple of years and over that period we’ve been using an average of 20 units a day. We have electricity only, no gas. So the heating and cooking is all done by electric.

Does that level of consumption seem low, high or average?

I spoke to my electric people a while back to see how much we were using. It was 12 units a day average, with oil heating, washing machine on once or twice a day, 3 bed semi with 4 people. Apparently that was pretty good for our size house and 4 people. If you have electric heating as well maybe 20 units a day isn’t too bad. What size house and how many people have you?

The house is a 2 bedroom new build flat. The heating is never on as the house is so well insulated. We have halogen downlighters in the ceiling which are pretty power hungry but they’re never on for any length of time.

I’ve always felt the bills were high and the quarterly bills were all over the place ranging from an average 3 units per day to 30 units per day! Scottish Power also seem completely incapable of reading the meter and issuing a corresponding bill. For the first few quarters we were getting bills of £60 then all of a sudden we got one for £500 as they claimed they had billed us incorrectly. Turned out they’d been giving us estimated bills despite the man calling to read the meter beforehand.

Useless goons.

In that case it seems a bit high. Can you do your own reading and update online or by phone? That’s what we do with Scottish Hydro.

are you on dual tariff?
lots of energy suppliers seem to get the rates mixed up at point of billing ie charge you charge you cheap rate for your standard rate usage and vice versa- then when they realize they try to backdate their mistake and charge you for it.

In that case it seems a bit high. Can you do your own reading and update online or by phone? That’s what we do with Scottish Hydro.

Yeah we do that now.

bigeyedbeans, we’re on a single rate tariff plus a standing charge.

ok – just checking cos e-on tried to scam my mum by charging her for their billing error backdated for 8 yrs!