So we had a VERY high gas bill from December to the end of March. I know the winter has been cold, but this was excessive, so I started investigating.

Now I know there are many different variables, so I tried to control as many as possible, and it would seem that the consumption is still very high:

7 days - approx 3 hrs heating and hot water in the morning, and 3 hrs heating and hot water in the evening, plus moderate gas hob use for cooking, we used just over 30 cubic feet of gas.

That seemed very high, so I watched the meter and the boiler uses approx 1 cubic meter of gas yesterday when the heating was on for an hour.

The boiler is old, but serviced fine every year. Is it knackered? Is the meter going nuts? Or is that normal?

We're in a new (bigger) house this year, but with a very similar pattern of usage (hours of heating, hot water & cooking) after checking the previous bills we've used slightly more gas by volume in four months in the new house than in a whole year in the old house. Surely that can't be right?

 

My gas only bill was £510 for 75 days.
standard 4 bed detached house.
getting pissed off with being ripped off.
thermostats sitting at 20 on constantly.

 

Ask your gas provider to check your meter as you think its faulty.

I'll never forget my free electric for 3yrs! We moved in and gave the high & low readings to scottish power. We then swapped to N power a year later.After 2yrs with N power they gave us a call to say they can give us a better deal if we stay - whats your current meter reading.

the low rate had not moved since we moved in and they wanted to monitor our night usage and then charge us for the 3yrs. I said that's fine and I would just turn the mains off at night. In the end they said how about we pay a good will payment of £500.

We ended up paying nothing back to them as they should have noticed the fault sooner. They swiftly changed the meter after.

 

They've asked us to note the ready every day at the same time for a week and then call them next Thursday with the readings - hopefully they'll come out and check the meter after that.

Good work with NPower though - stick it to 'em!