Since July last year, I’ve taken on the task of paying the monthly Meralco Bill at home. The money comes from my Dad though, haha! I just use my BPI Online Banking account to pay online because it’s more convenient for him.

Instead of spending an hour or so lining up at a Bayad Center, I only spend 5 minutes in the comforts of my own room. The only bothersome thing to do is when I have to deposit money in my account, but I go to the usually deserted BPI branch inside our village which is like a 2 min drive from our house.

The point is, I’m quite aware of how much our monthly electric consumption is.

So you can imagine my shock when I saw that our monthly electric bill for March 12, 2010 to April 12, 2010 is a whopping PHP 11,983.85! (1USD = PHP44)

• July 2009 – PHP 6947.10
• August 2009 – PHP 7114.70
• September 2009 – PHP 6061.25
• October 2009 – PHP 6599.50
• December 2009 – PHP 5227.65
• January 2010 – PHP 6159.10

The funny thing is, I was away for 7 days during the billing period and honestly, I’m probably the only abusive one at home who uses the airconditioning practically 24/7.

I’ve heard of Meralco recently increasing the rates, but this almost 100% increase is INSANE, considering that the consumption is more or less the same from the previous month.

In our house, we have the following appliances that consume electricity:

• Three (3) aircons. My parents barely turn on theirs, even in the afternoon because my dad has a bad case of arthritis, my brother only turns on his when he gets back from work which is at 10PM. As I’ve said, I’m the only one who uses the aircon for more than 10 hours or so.
• We use energy saving bulbs in all our rooms (that’s around 7-8 bulbs) that’s only on during the evenings until early mornings for around 12 hours or so.
• We have 2 refrigerators and a water dispenser which is on 24/7
• 4 TVs which are on for around 5-6 hours a day more or less.
• 2 laptops and 1 desktop computer, 1 network router and 1 PLDT modem.

How about you? Have you checked your Meralco bill lately? Hope you’re prepared! Chuvaness has written about a similar experience regarding her scandalously high electricity bill for last month and a lot of people have shared theirs as well.

Sigh. To hear something like this is quite depressing since my fiance and I are in the process of looking for own place. Just thinking about our plan to get get a housing loan and the amount of the monthly amortization combined with the ridiculously high Meralco bill makes me want to convince my fiance to stay in my parent’s house!

OH, the more ironic thing, with all the 2 hour rotating brown outs daily, the electric bills are still higher!

• Did your bill go up drastically this month of April (2010)? If yes, then join us in PROTESTING the latest price hikes!