Is my landlord trying to scam me? (Energy bills)

I can’t see the bills properly but steep jumps usually are because they’ve estimated bills and then have an actual metre reading so you are billed for what you have used.

For example - if you use £100 energy a month for two months,say, they could estimate that for the next four months. Then come take a reading and find that the meter shows you have actually been using more than that £100 so the full amount is billed when an actual reading is used instead of an estimated.


As for the rest I don’t quite understand what the agreement was with your landlord...you had a 12 month contract but only lived there for 6 months?
Where does the nine months rent come in?

i don't know if i understand what your landlord sent you, but does this help? it's Understanding your Energy Bill guidance from your energy supplier

www.npower.com/help-and-support/bills-and-payments/your-bill-explained/

is your deposit protected? if you want to challenge your landlord you can use the free alternative dispute resolution service from the deposit scheme.

www.citizensadvice.org.uk/housing/renting-privately/ending-your-tenancy/getting-your-tenancy-deposit-back/

Hello, So I was in an off campus student accommodation that was a 12 month contract, there was 4 of us. Because of covid, 3/4 of us only lived in the house for 6 months, out of the 12 months we paid for. Instead of collecting rent for 9 months, the landlord chose to pay us any under spent, energy bills. our budget for the energy bills (gas,water,electricity) was £1256.

Our landlord, however came back to us, and is saying, we've infact spent over this budget, and so he will be deducting what we've spent from our security deposits, he is also charging us £180 for cleaning, (we were really clean tenants, so we didnt mess up the place)

In total,our landlord is claiming, we've spent 2181.57, with 725.7 overspend. Please if you have any idea on energy bills, have a look at what he sent us and let me know, if he is trying to cheat us.

https://imgur.com/a/ZEODBY0

^ This adds up to 1297, if we include the 180, it still doesn't add up to the 2181. And what's strange is, there's a very steep jump in our usage, from march 1st to march 4th. and also a steep cost from march 5th to june.
Please help me, I may be misunderstanding this all.

It would be better if you could take photos of the part of the bill which shows the usage - so you can see the energy in kW.h, rather than the cost.

Okay, the landlord didnt show us that part, But what would that prove?

So are the photos not yours, or do you not have copies of the bills?

It would show the actual usage, rather than just the cost of it, and the time periods that the electricity was consumed. You have a right to see these bills, and I for one would be requesting to see them in their entirety - particularly in order to check that the usage recorded by the electricity company is congruent for the lockdown period where not all tenants were resident.

We had a 12months contract, one person stayed for 9 months, the rest of us stayed for 6 months. We proposed to pay for the 9 months, instead of the 12 months, which we saw as fair, since most of us stayed for only 6 months.

If you signed a 12-month contract you owe 12 months worth of utilities. You can't turn everything off just because the house is empty. You can't pick and chose the bits of the contract you stick to.

I assume you read the meter when you moved in and when you left?

One more thing, We had a smart meter installed some months after we stayed there, Does that still mean the electricity was estimated?

It doesn't sound like you are being scammed, just sounds like you've used more electricity than the supplier expected and so the costs have gone up. That happens.
If I understand your post correctly, your landlord let you off rent because you weren't living there? I would say that is incredibly generous of them considering they would still have had to pay the mortgage in that time, could not rent it out to anyone else and presumably you were in a contract? I wouldn't object to the bills too much as they would be perfectly within the law to demand all the rent from you!

The steep jump was from march 1st to march 4th, is it still correct?

Thanks

Yup that’s exactly what you would see if it was an actual read vs an estimated read. BasicAlly what looks to you like a “steep jump” is actually them charging for the actual energy you used throughout the time and not the estimates amount. The fact the bill is only for four days is indicative of that -they estimated to 1st then took an actual read to see your meter was actually over the amount by quite a ways.
Check that the account number on each is the same and the address is correct-otherwise, yes the bills are correct.
Without seeing any of the correspondence I don’t know how he has arrived at that figure as I still don’t really know what you already paid etc.