Oh no! We just got a $2000 electricity bill!

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Check your recent bills to see if they have been 'actual' meter readings or 'estimated' meter readings. Your supplier is required by Aus law to state on the bill which it is. Possibly they have underestimated your last few readings and now have an actual reading - meaning you have to pay for the amount they underestimated. Does that make any sense??

We have just been through exactly the same thing with our gas bill. Went from about $300 to a bill of $1500!! Huh??? Turns out they had been estimating our bill for a whole year. If you are not satisfied with the response of your supplier when you query the bill, contact the energy ombudsman in your state. They will act as an intermediary between you and your supplier to investigate the bill on your behalf. We had the ombudsman investigate and (after a whole lot of confusion and argument!!) we did not owe the gas company the amount they had stated (they sent the $1500 bill based on their 'estimation' that they had 'underestimated' the original bills... they still hadn't taken an actual meter reading!).

Good luck, I hope you get the bill sorted and you don't owe them so much money!!

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Yeah that ^ we had the same thing happen.

Thanks everyone for the replies, i will def be calling them tomorrow to see what on earth has happened. I did a check of the meters and they all look right, and DF called last quarter to make sure they had done an actual read as it seemed low for winter and they assured him they had. Hopefully there is some other error on their part, there was an article in our local paper recently warning everyone to check their bills carefully if they had a sudden spike as people had been having issues so hopefully this is related! DF is still being an absolute PIA about it, he even turned the tv off mid-show on me and said we need to be more careful about our electricity consumption...!

Have you had one of those new peak-use meters installed? They've been rolled out over Sydney, I don't know about other areas but they're disgusting. They're designed to read when everyone is using the most electricity and then you get slogged a tariff on top of the cost for using electricity during that time. It's meant to be an environmental initiative to try and get people to reduce their power use, but it's really just another money grab.

Crap! That's alot! I'm a bit worried abbot or next bill as we recently got a dryer and we have used the split stem alot more than we usually do.
Hope you get it spurred and don't have to pay that much!

Did you have any luck getting an answer from the company?

Df spoke with them and they agreed its likely to be a mistake. We are with origin too so it is going to their high bill investigation team and they have said they will reissue it in 14 days. Fingers crossed it's a bit more reasonable!

Well that's good news, hopefully even better news in a couple of weeks :)

My DH would have flipped if ours come through as that much!

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Df spoke with them and they agreed its likely to be a mistake. We are with origin too so it is going to their high bill investigation team and they have said they will reissue it in 14 days. Fingers crossed it's a bit more reasonable!

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Wow lucky you thats who told us that was bill pay it and get over it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

we had a huge jump our last quarter from just under $500 to just under $800 this quarter. We are low income, so that was a HUGE bill for us to pay off. $2000 sounds seriously ridiculous though, I would definitely be calling them! That does not sound right at all. It's just not fair, and apparently prices are going to increase again! Grrr.

Did DF appologise for accusing you of wasting that power?

You'd think it has to be either a mistake, or you have an electrical fault.
Bills go up but not 7 times the normal amount!

My latest ecletricty bill is $500 plus $80 as im changing companies.

i had a problem like that once a $900 bill and i said its not right they looked into it and found to a dodgey meter reading...

DF called them today and they are sticking to the $2000!!

So PO'd about it, but a bit resigned now. According to them our last read was an estimate only and this bill is correcting the previous estimate, despite the fact that DF called them last bill to ensure that it WASN'T an estimate as we didn't want to end up with a high bill this time round. Bah to them.

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DF called them today and they are sticking to the $2000!!

So PO'd about it, but a bit resigned now. According to them our last read was an estimate only and this bill is correcting the previous estimate, despite the fact that DF called them last bill to ensure that it WASN'T an estimate as we didn't want to end up with a high bill this time round. Bah to them.

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basically we had the exact same thing and when I grilled them about why there was an estimated bill when I know they had access they couldn't give me an answer which really peed me off!

I had a massive fall out with them again last week, spent 15 minutes talking to some twit trying to explain something and him talking to me like dirt to be put onto someone else I said the exact same thing to her and she goes "no problem mrs xyz, anything else I can help you with?"..... FRUSTRATING!!

Hope they are giving you time to pay it off!

Yeah, that is why DF is PO'd too, we have easy access to our meter, but we live down a VERY steep hill so reckons they just couldn't be bothered. And why lie and say they read it when they didn't?

I doubt DF sorted out a payment plan with them, they had better be reasonable! We could pay it straight away, but don't want to out of principle! We might have used that much electricity, but if someone could have been arsed doing their job properly we would have paid it over 6 months not 3!