I wish I could get mine down to 15 units per day!!! My usuage is apparently 55 to 60 a day. I am gunna get a meter and check it out myself as I dont know anyone who uses anywhere near the amount I do. Good luck with your problem and if I get any joy I wil post back.

the previous comment was indeed correct you always need to check your meter readings when receiving your bills, having worked in the industry I can tell you there are many discrepancies in monthly payment some paying too much some too little the energy companies only monitor payments periodically it is up to you to ensure your meter readings are accurate, if your bills have been underestimated they will eventually catch up resulting in an accurate bill higher than expected and your provider putting up your payment to cover the previous under payments.

I would also say that to compare what you pay to a friend or relative can be very misleading, ie the previous commented his was far lower than yours , mine own is higher 2 beds 2 people £app £100 - £110 per month Averages mean little also All properties vary for so many reasons, insulation, type of boiler, age of boiler, also a boiler serviced regularly runs much more efficiently so cheaper, habits like keeping doors closed etc etc and also you as a person, I feel my house is comfortable other people find it too warm so I can understand why others have lower bills than me because they dont heat to the same degree.

I do think that electricity is harder to monitor and we feel we get better value from gas thats because it does 2 major things, heating and water but we rarely realise the amount of electric we use on so many modern gadgets.

In respect of a pre pay meter I think you may find that a charge to change over would be made as they are not so favoured by the utility companies other than for people unable to pay by normal methods.

you can have meters checked to ensure they are correct but believe you me this can be VERY difficult to get done and in reality it is extremley rare that meters are faulty.

Also you said you had just changed suplliers it may be worth mentioning that on change over the readings used are normally estimated also they are not given by the old co to the new but are estimates by the new company which can be inaccurate but this balaces out as it means your final bill to your last company may have been lower than it should have been resulting in your first bill to the new company being higher (and visa versa) there is only a problem if your final readings do not match to your start readings with the new company

I think the first thing to do is check your bills and see how much you're being charged per unit by your provider. Also, check with them if they are billing you based on estimated or actual readings. Scottish Power is my provider and I only pay an average of £70 - £80 per month for both G&E, and I have lights and things on all the time - I have reptiles so heat pads and viv lights use up the electric.

If you don't get any joy, you might want to think about a pre-payment meter. Technically they can cost you more, but if you're not using that much fuel you could save money.

I've been paying £80 a month for electric and £50 for gas for over a year now and after discussing this with friends and family I discovered that for two people that's probably a bit high - most of the people I asked paid on average £50 for both utilities a month not each!

We got one of those Owl Energy meters and tried to work out what was eating all the electric but couldn't find anything specific, we turned off the oil radiator and electric heater in the conservatory but the consumption hasn't gone down, we have some energy efficicent bulbs, don't leave lights on, turn off plugs for some, (not all) appliances when not in use, set the PC to turn off at a set time so think we are doing about as much as we can but our consumption and therefore bills just don't go down. I just submitted a gas & electric meter reading to Scottish Power, who we swapped to just before Christmas I think it was to get a capped rate, and after hitting the enter button it does a calculation for you based on the last reading and spits out an updated bill for you, which from 12 December until today advised we had used £115 worth of gas and £115 worth of electricity in just over a month, surely that can't be right. There are only two of us in the house, we are at work all day and only have lights on in the rooms we are in.

Any advice you can give to help us find the source of the excessive usage becuase we are begining to think the council have tapped into our supply to run the street lights! We even took our gas and electric readings twice a day, (before leaving for work, when we got home) for 19 days in a row which showed we were using on average 4 units during the day when at work, 10 a day on a weekend and an around 10 overnight consistently - average of 15 in a 24hr period, which didn't seem like alot but when we asked for a recalcuation of our monthly payment they insist we are USING £80 a month in electric.

HELP !!!!!