Martin Lewis urges British Gas, OVO, EDF, EON, Octopus customers to act now to avoid overpaying on next energy bill
Martin Lewis has issued crucial advice to Brits in order to ensure they do not end up paying too much on their next energy bill. October 1 sees the energy price cap go up.
Energy regulator Ofgem is upping the price cap by 10 per cent on October 1. Under the new energy price cap, the typical annual dual-fuel bill paid by direct debit will be £1,717 per year.
The price cap covers 28 million households in England, Wales and Scotland and is set every three months. To ensure people pay the correct amount in their next bill, money-saving expert Mr Lewis urged Brits not using a smart meter to submit a reading on or around October 1.
Speaking on Good Morning Britain today (September 26), Mr Lewis said: "If you don’t have a working smart meter, you should be doing a meter reading at some point around next Tuesday. You could do it now, you could do it a few days after. Here’s why.
"There is the old price and the new price (of energy). If you don’t do a meter reading, they are assuming how much of your usage was on the cheap price, and how much of the usage was on the more expensive price, so they could assume more of it was on the more expensive price than it was.
"If you do a meter reading, you draw a line and you are going to get the correct amount billed to you, not too much at the higher level.
"You could do it a few days before, a few days after, you just want to make sure you are not running a few weeks over because they will be able to assume you have used more at the higher rate. I’m not suggesting they do it deliberately but it is done by algorithm and the algorithm could work against you."
Between 1 October and 31 December, gas prices will be capped at 6.24p per kilowatt hour (kWh), and electricity at 24.50p per kWh. That means a dual-fuel direct debit household using a typical amount of energy, external will pay £1,717 per year, a rise of £149.