bill problem for rented apartment

iambrazil

Hi guys,

Hoping someone can give me some advice on this. I started renting an apartment in September & opened an account with Airtricity for the property.

Had some problems with the hot water a few months ago and also the heating before that. Basically the heating system was never explained when I moved in so it didn't work properly for a while and soon after the really cold weather in Dec/Jan the hot water in the property stopped working properly (ie. it was not working as it was when I moved in).

The agency who look after the apartment were helpful in sorting out the water problems with regards to sending someone out to fix them as soon as I informed them - but it has taken from December until just last week to fix it completely.

I have just received my latest Airtricity bill and it is well over twice what the bill was for the previous period covering December to January. The current bill is over €300 for an apartment with two people living in it for 2 months as opposed to €140 for the same length of time from November to January.

The only explanation I can think of for this is that the advice I received from the heating engineer and the problems I had with the hot water in the apartment have led to this large increase.

Does anyone think I have a case for getting money back from the letting agency as compensation? I've never had the deal with anything like this despite renting various properties for many years so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

chicken fingers

not a chance.

latenia

Maybe the 1st bill was an estimate and lower than it should have been.

D3PO

its your bill so pay it.

The_Conductor

Just curious- why do you imagine that you're entitled to some sort of a rebate (from someone)? You used the electricity- end of......

You might be entitled to have the cost of fixing the heating deducted from your bill- but to be honest with you- if you ran the immersion heater for 2 months straight (as I think you're suggesting you did?)- if I were your landlord, I'd be chasing you with the bill for the plumber too......

EUR300 for the 2-months from Nov 2010 to Jan 2011- given the prevailing outside temperatures, is far from unusual..... Is your heating electrical in nature?

hoser expat

I had problems with the storage heaters in my rented house, and the timer wasn't functioning properly so they were on at peak times. The timer is owned by ESB, so they eventually came out to fix it, and without me asking deducted 200 Euro from my bill because of the fault meant I used too much energy.

So, it is possible.

The_Conductor

hoser expat wrote: »

I had problems with the storage heaters in my rented house, and the timer wasn't functioning properly so they were on at peak times. The timer is owned by ESB, so they eventually came out to fix it, and without me asking deducted 200 Euro from my bill because of the fault meant I used too much energy.

So, it is possible.

If you have a nighttime meter- the timer associated with the nighttime meter is owned by ESB Networks. If you have timers on your storage heaters- they certainly aren't.....

magneticimpulse

What reading is the bill based on...estimate or exact reading? What was the previous bill based on?

If this one is an estimate, you can ring them up with an exact reading and they can adjust the bill according.