A close reading of our electricity bills delivered quite a shock

OLD habits die hard. But they do die.

Our farm is registered for VAT. Every two months, I spend three or four hours doing up our VAT return.

One of the recurrent bills is from Electric Ireland — the ESB in old money — and we have four separate meters.

We are signed up to online billing, so I only look at the bills when printing them off for the VAT.

I don’t know why I didn’t notice earlier the evolving situation I am about to describe, but I got some shock last week when I printed off the latest set of bills.

Not because of the sums involved; more of that anon.

No, while the first one I picked up stated “Your meter was read”, the next said “Your bill is estimated”; the third said “Last nine bills estimated”, and the fourth “As your last 32 bills have been estimated…” Thirty-two bills estimated? If my sums are correct, it could be more than five years since the meter was last read. The Electric Ireland website says that meters are read up to four times a year.

I would think that reading this meter is not difficult.

It’s located a couple of hundred meters from the road across a very dry field (currently in stubbles) through a gate that is never locked.

If someone is being paid to read it, this should be happening. Presumably it is built into the price.

If the reader feels there is an obstacle to their doing so, surely they should contact us.

If they are not doing it, we would be willing to do it ourselves.

I am slow about suggesting any further reduction in rural services.

But I never felt the same connection with the meter reader as I did with Tommy the postman, who called more often, or Connie the bull man, whose visits were longer.

Back to price, a recently published report from the Commission for Regulation of Utilities shows that electricity bills across all supplier plans increased by an average of 6pc in 2017.

It also showed that Electric Ireland dropped below 50pc of the market share (49.5pc) for the first time.

Deregulation of energy supply began in 2011.

There are now 12 active electricity suppliers in the market (up from five in 2013).

The other main players are Bord Gáis Energy (17.8pc), SSE Airtricity (15.3pc), Energia (7.9pc) and PrePayPower (5.9pc).

While overall prices rose, the addition of more players has shaken up the market.

At an individual level, the report showed an active customer switching or renegotiating every year could have saved €1,146 (cumulative) over the previous four years.

It showed that 14pc of all electricity customers switched suppliers in 2017 and 8pc renegotiated with their current supplier.

Loyalty used to be something that was highly valued in business.

Now, many are so busy chasing new customers that existing ones are effectively penalised rather than rewarded for their loyalty.

Farmers are traditionally slow to change, but that is changing.

We are no longer as afraid of being let down in some way by the more recent arrivals.

This spring, we moved our farm insurance for the first time in living memory.

When a company rep later said to Robin, “ye left us”, he replied, “it wasn’t for pennies.”

Another big obstacle to moving is the hassle of finding the best deal.

On this front, it’s worth mentioning that there are two accredited energy price comparison websites, bonkers.ie and switcher.ie.

These websites also offer a switching service to manage the process of switching supplier.

Switching is free, provided, of course, that any existing bills have been paid and any contracts expired.

IF MY SUMS ARE CORRECT, IT COULD BE MORE THAN FIVE YEARS SINCE THE METER WAS LAST READ