On Fri, 01 Nov 2013 10:56:41 -0000, John Rumm wrote:

On 01/11/2013 08:14, Gefreiter Krueger wrote:
Can you understand this gas/electricity bill?

Having reviewed your account, we've noticed that you've paid for
more than you've used with your monthly payments of £74.00.
We'll refund £116.35 to your account on or around 5 Nov 13.

Based on our projections of your future usage at the price on your
tariff, we've flattened your payments with a new Direct Debit
amount at £80.00, starting on 16 Dec 13.

Is it just me or do those contradict each other? Am I using more or
less? Why am I now paying a bigger amount each month AND they're
refunding me money? What the ****?

They aim to have to have you pay about the right amount averaged out
over the year. However this tends to be based on historical usage, and
possibly some prediction of how cold they expect this year to be.

It tends to go wrong when there is a big year on year change in degree
days[1] as there was last year and the year before where we moved from a
year that was 10% warmer than average to one that was 11% colder. Thus
creating a big swing in demand. You also upset the system if you make
changes to your usage for any reason (patterns of use, changes to
insulation, boiler etc)


[1] You can find tables out there is you google - but its basically an
indication of how much heating is needed and on how many days.

They really got confused when I wasn't living here for two years, then moved back and installed electric heating in my garage for parrots, then changed it to gas (fed from the house central heating).

I'm also not a typical user - I don't tend to heat the house very much so my usage doesn't really change throughout the year.

--
I've been charged with murder for killing a man with sandpaper. To be honest I only intended to rough him up a bit.