My gas and electricity are provided for the same company and the bill is something very complex that the common person is unable to understand. I am in Portugal and I wonder if this also happens in other countries, what's the situation in your country?
I live in the United States and I know that they are supplied by different companies. The bill here is relatively easy to read. I will give us a break down of how many kilowatts we have used and the amount it is charged for this. In addition, it shows how much is from being taxed and it finally shows the total cost. It also includes a graph of how much you used every month for the past year and how much electricity you used in that month two years ago. This is great because it helps let you know whether you are on the right track or not.
I live in the Jamaica, and the light bill is basically set up in the same way. There's a graph to track how much electricity was used during the previous months of the year. There's a section showing how much tax you're supposed to pay as well as the killowatt usage, and how much you're being charged for this. In Jamaica, we also pay for the fuel used to produce the electricity, which makes up for the bulk of the light bill I'm afraid.
I will tell you how my bill is. You have possibly ten items that sum up for the total. Ridiculous enough, you pay more from taxes (yes taxes paid to the state are included in a private company's bill) than from the actual consumption and on top of all this, you are not billed from January 1st from January 31st for example, you are billed from the last day you gave the reading to the day they actually read it, minus the estimate you paid in between. It is very hard to understand and I don't even know how this is legal.
