You’ve received your energy bill and checked the second page of your bill, but you’re surprised that it’s higher than usual. This article will go through the most common scenarios when this happens and provide some likely reasons why. Bear in mind that more than one scenario can be true at any point in time.

Payments are different to bills, though higher bills will result in higher payments with time.

TABLE OF CONTENTS


If You’ve Recently Joined So Energy (From Another Supplier)

When you sign up to So Energy, whether directly via our website or through a third party, you’ll be asked to input your yearly usage for all fuels (electricity and/or gas). This value is used to calculate the monthly Direct Debit which we think will cover your usage, since at this stage we have no way to know how much energy you use. If you don’t give us your exact usage, we have to make an educated guess around what your payments should be.


You’ll receive your first bill (another word for energy statement) from So Energy around a month after your switch is complete. By this point, we’ll have received two things:

  • Meter readings (either from yourself directly or from a communicating smart meter if you’ve got one) showing a month’s worth of energy use
  • Historical usage figures for the property. Only your current energy supplier has access to these, and they take a while to transfer when you sign up to a new one. We’ll use these figures to estimate your usage and deem an estimated meter reading if we don’t have one from yourself or a smart meter

If your first bill doesn't look quite right, it’s likely that you haven’t provided a meter reading or were not aware of the historic usage of the property (or both). Sometimes this cannot be avoided, especially if you have moved into a new property.

Sometimes complications can happen around the opening reading validation process.

To avoid any surprises in the future, we encourage you to provide a meter reading each month (ideally on the monthly anniversary of the day when you came on supply) or even better have a smart meter installed if you haven’t already.

This will allow you to better understand your usage and make any adjustments to your energy usage.

If you joined during the colder months and are on Equal Payments, it’s more likely that your bills are going to be higher than your payments since you’ll be using more energy for heating and you’ll end up building a bit of a debit until spring. We take this into account when calculating or reviewing your monthly payments.

You can change to Seasonally Adjusted Payments via your online account, which will see your payments increase by 25% (of the amount you should be paying on your usage) between October to March but decrease by 25% between April to September.


If You’ve Moved Into a Property Already Supplied by So Energy

We encourage everyone who moves into a new property to take photos of the meter readings from the meters on the wall on the day of the move. It’s also important to share the readings with us and the landlord/letting agents/previous owners and agree the changeover readings in any check-in reports.

Doing so means everyone knows the starting point for usage. Even so, during the first few months no one will know what your usage looks like, and any Direct Debit amounts will be estimated based on the history of the property. It’s normal for your bills to be different to what they were at your previous place.

The same advice applies as above to provide a meter reading each month or even better have a smart meter installed if you haven’t already. This will allow you to better understand your usage and make any adjustments to your energy usage.

It’s also worth checking the EPC rating for the new property.


If You Haven’t Provided a Reading in a Long Time (Catch-up Bill)

Firstly, if you haven’t provided a reading in a long time but have done so recently, thank you!

Since our systems work on monthly billing, this means that we’ve had to issue an estimate for each month without readings. The longer the period goes between meter readings, the less accurate the estimates will be.

If the estimates have been lower than your actual usage for a long time, when actual readings come in it may look on the bill like you’ve had a lot of usage during one month. But in effect, this usage would have accumulated slowly each month we didn’t have a meter reading.

If you haven’t already, we encourage you to get a free smart meter installed so you don’t have to worry about submitting meter readings each month. This will help avoid those unpleasant catch-up bills.


If Your Usage Has Increased

Your usage varies from month to month, especially when seasons change. However, if you noticed a large difference and you’re providing regular meter readings, it’s worth looking at your usage a year or two ago. This may involve digging up past bills with So Energy. You can find all your bills on your online account to see how it compares.

Even if you are using a different amount than a year ago, it’s worth thinking about anything which has changed in the property since:

  • Have you changed any appliances recently?
  • Had more people move into the house?
  • Are you using the heating a bit more often or changed the settings on the thermostat?

All of these things will impact your usage, and can result in significant changes to your bill. For tips on how you can reduce your usage, click here.


What Happens Next 

Payments are separate from bills, but unless your bill went up due to a one-off event and there is a significant amount of credit on the account already, your payments are likely going to have to increase to account for the higher usage. This is done via a Direct Debit review, and we do these throughout the year for our customers.

You can always make a one-off payment via your account to reduce any debit (or increase existing credit) in order to offset a high bill, and this would reduce any payment increases which might have been necessary otherwise.

If we’re forecasting that you are still paying enough to cover your usage, we won’t increase your payments.


A Quick Note on Meters & Usage Recording

The vast majority of meters record usage accurately within the parameters set by the Office for Product Safety and Standards. So long as you’re getting the reading correctly from the actual meter on the wall, you can be assured of the accuracy of the reading.

However, if you do believe your meter may be one of the very unlikely few to be recording usage outside of the accepted parameters, click here for more details.