Korean Job Discussion Forums

[juicyfresh]

okay - i think there's a problem with my electric bill, and i'm having trouble resolving it. if anyone has had a similar problem, or knows about electricity pricing in Busan, perhaps you can 'shed some light' on our situation:

my hubby and i recently moved into a big apartment. we have one of those big upright aircons, and smaller wall-mounted aircon in another room.
we also have a medium fishtank, a computer, a PDP tv, and a large washer/dryer that we run about 1.5 times a week.

in august, we were pretty careless with the aircon usage. (our previous one-room loft had a small aircon that we left on 24/7 and the electric bill was still really low.)
the electric bill for that month came to 360,000 won!!! yowza.
we immediately stopped being careless and have been VERY conservative with electricity since then.
we just recieved our next bill, for 363,000 won!!!

our korean friends with big apartments claim that one would need to run the aircon AND dryer 24/7 to rack up that kind of bill, they think there must be a problem.

the apartment manager and a guy from the electric company came out and looked around and shrugged their shoulders... there appears to be nothing wrong with our meter.
our employers tell us that we have a different lifestyle than koreans, so we probably use more electricity. (bullsh*t)

i just don't see how we could possibly be using that much electricity - we're not even home that much and everything is shut off for most of the day. we can't afford that kind of bill each month for conservative power-usage!
what should we do?
any advice is welcome!!! thanks!

[roadwork]

Unplug everything in your apartment or turn all the breakers/fuses off and then go out and look at your meter. If it's still spinning (from the likes of your bill, I would assume quite rapidly) then someone is tapping into your power. Other people have posted on this before at other times. If that's the case, you need to contact the electric company and if they don't do anything, then you'll need to contact the authorities...and you will need a Korean speaker.

[UknowsI]

It is possible that your next bill was just an interpolation of your previous bill. If that's the case you'll get a negative bill next month. It happened to my gas bill and I got refunded 8000 won the next month. However if someone came over to check your power meter he should have noticed, but he could be just a clueless employee.

[juicyfresh]

thanks for the helpful replies - much appreciated!!!

another thing that has crossed my mind (it might be ridiculous,) but i wonder if it's possible that our big aircon, or another appliance (that we bought used) has some sort of defect causing it to suck insane amounts of juice?
is it possible for an appliance to malfunction in that way? i know nothing of these things....

or maybe our cat is holding crazy disco parties every time we leave the house, hahaha.

[ontheway]

What you need to know about electric rates in Korea is that they have penalties built in as your usage rises. As your kw hours increase, your rate per kwh will jump again and again. I'm not sure of the percentages but it's huge. Think of it as doubling and doubling and doubling again.

So, if you double your use, your bill could quadruple. If you triple your use, your bill could go up 8 times.

Use less juice.

[caylia]

I hear that some apartment buildings spread the cost of the electricity EVENLY TO ALL UNITS in the building, which is really messed up.

Also, there is the "vampire effect", where outlets with a plug in it will continuously suck out voltage even if the appliance is turned off.

[Hobophobic]

[jonpurdy]

[toadkillerdog]

So, what was the outcome?

[egrog1717]

What's with all the freaking OLD posts getting dragged up today? lol...

If the OP is still around... Could have been that your bill ran from the middle of one month to the middle of the next... So instead of getting hit with a 600k bill, you got hit with 2x 300k...