Just arrived in Taipei, and signed up for six months in a flat in Xinpu. I have agreed to pay 2000NT a month for bills (water, maintenance fee, broadband, cable) and a further 5nt per unit for electricity.
Not knowing how much things cost here, I agreed to these terms. But I’m thinking about renegotiating, as it seems pretty expensive. I like the apartment, and the area. So I might offer to sign a year’s contract, on the condition that the costs are looked at again.
[quote=“chinamac79”]Just arrived in Taipei, and signed up for six months in a flat in Xinpu. I have agreed to pay 2000NT a month for bills (water, maintenance fee, broadband, cable) and a further 5nt per unit for electricity.
Not knowing how much things cost here, I agreed to these terms. But I’m thinking about renegotiating, as it seems pretty expensive. I like the apartment, and the area. So I might offer to sign a year’s contract, on the condition that the costs are looked at again.
Am I being ripped off by my landlord?[/quote]
no. broadband is like 1000 per month, cable is 600. water maybe a couple hundred. maintenance can be in the thousands… depends on where you live. what about gas? hot water heater? do you cook? that’s another couple of hundred. 5 nt per unit for electricity is pretty standard. you’re not getting ripped off, but at the same time, he’s not a generous landlord. i bet if you had haggled a bit, you could have brought it down to one-five, or maybe you could have negotiated to pay the electricity for the AC only (what i do with the flats that i rent out).
Actually, the cost of water depends where you live, we pay almost twice as much up here than we did just a bit further down the hill. Something to do wit the fact that they have to pump the water up the hill…
Electricity is more expensive in the summer months (for obvious reasons), but I’m not sure what the unit price is.
The management fee depends on the size of the place and the type of building. If there’s no security/front desk, there’s generally no management fee. I didn’t pay any in the first place I lived in when I moved here and we pay very little here, despite living in a much bigger place, but then again, we have to throw away our own garbage here so…
I don’t think you’re being ripped off at all. My guard fee is 900NT/mo and I pay 1088 for internet/basic cable. Water and gas is pretty low but I don’t keep track to close since my electricity, gas and water are paid by the landlord and he charges me every 2-3 months. I also get copies of these bills from the utility company and I think combined it works out to 1500NT/mo or so but I don’t pay too close attention. that might change this summer though with the AC running.
Is there a guard at your apt? Is there garbage collection at your apartment (dumpster vs running out to the garbage truck)?
5NT per KW would be expensive. That’s 15 cents in the US and only the most outrageously expensive places have electricity that high and Taiwan’s juice is cheap. To put it in context for a 4 story house we pay $3000NT for 2 months during the summer.
Your post made me realize our power bill is outrageously high (3 to 4,000 over two months for a three-bedroom apartment), and I’m not sure why.
Is there any way to measure how much power different appliances are taking? The obvious culprits: electric hot water heater on the balcony (I really should get in the habit of turning that off), air conditioner (but only in the bedroom, and we only use that at night), fridge…
Anyway, the price the landlord wants to charge you sounds reasonable. Maybe you could get it a little lower, but you’re not being cheated.
[quote=“chinamac79”]Just arrived in Taipei, and signed up for six months in a flat in Xinpu. I have agreed to pay 2000NT a month for bills (water, maintenance fee, broadband, cable) and a further 5nt per unit for electricity.
Not knowing how much things cost here, I agreed to these terms. But I’m thinking about renegotiating, as it seems pretty expensive. I like the apartment, and the area. So I might offer to sign a year’s contract, on the condition that the costs are looked at again.
[quote=“lostinasia”]Your post made me realize our power bill is outrageously high (3 to 4,000 over two months for a three-bedroom apartment), and I’m not sure why.
Is there any way to measure how much power different appliances are taking? The obvious culprits: electric hot water heater on the balcony (I really should get in the habit of turning that off), air conditioner (but only in the bedroom, and we only use that at night), fridge…
[/quote]
Could be the air conditioner. Could be someone is stealing it, which happens in Taiwan, I’ve heard. Turn off everything in your apartment, and see if the electric meter is still running.
[quote=“bababa”]Could be the air conditioner. Could be someone is stealing it, which happens in Taiwan, I’ve heard. Turn off everything in your apartment, and see if the electric meter is still running.[/quote]I’ve had this done to me once at a house in the countryside, so do check your wiring.
Our electricity bill is low because my wife is cheap(miserly ); she doesn’t cook at home; and I’m at work for 8 hours a day. We only use AC in one room last year, but this year my computer room has AC and next year my daughters bedroom gets AC when she gets booted out of our room into the 3rd floor room because of the new addition in January to the Okami Clan. I generally give my wife a $10K bump for summer electric and that seems to chill her out. If it wasn’t for the kid and me, she’d sweat it out.
We have an electric water heater; I generally use 2 computers at a time; and my wife is a Korean soap opera addict.
Your rate shouldn’t be 5nt per kwh unless you are running like several central AC units on a residential account (in that case you wouldn’t get a residential account, probably commercial or industrial). For normal home use your rate should be around 3-4nt per kwh in the summer, and around 3nt or less per kwh during any other time of the year. Just know that you are generally charged bimonthly and that your rate goes up exponentially when your consumption goes up. I had landlords that tied like two floors on the same account and as a result our rate was much higher than it should be… that and I had really inefficient AC unit and other appliances (actually more like bad wiring) that ends up making my room consume over 800kwh in a 2 month period, making my electric bill VERY high. Take this into account before renting a room… some rooms are just always hot for some reason and running air conditioning means paying a lot for power…
True, I have paid as much as nt$4000 for the months of July and August. Aircon is a killer.
As stated on the pdf I linked, he would need to consume over 700 kWh before he hit a rate of nt$5.1. Even then, it is only every hour above 700 that is charged at that rate.
Though I have to say that he does seem to be getting a deal on broadband, cable and everything else: As someone else stated, broadband and cable alone would run at least nt$1500 a month if he was registering them himself.
True, I have paid as much as nt$4000 for the months of July and August. Aircon is a killer.
As stated on the pdf I linked, he would need to consume over 700 kWh before he hit a rate of nt$5.1. Even then, it is only every hour above 700 that is charged at that rate.
Though I have to say that he does seem to be getting a deal on broadband, cable and everything else: As someone else stated, broadband and cable alone would run at least nt$1500 a month if he was registering them himself.[/quote]
I think broadband is most likely shared. I pay only 100nt a month for broadband for that reason. As for cable, it’s probably illegally hooked up.
Regardless, it would seem that this would offset the fact of being overcharged for electricity, given that all of his other utilities, including broadband and cable will only run him nt$2000/month. Broadband is nt$1000, cable about nt$500 if you register it yourself. Gas and water run about nt$500-600 and nt350 respectively and I live alone. I do cook and shower a lot, so maybe the quote for gas is a bit higher than average.
On the other hand, if he considers that I paid nt$1001 for 453 kWh over the last month and that he would be paying nt$2265 for exactly the same thing, I guess the benefit is close to negated. So yes, he is getting screwed on the electric.
The big thing that influences your bill is the load use. They add a flat fee based on the highest amount of electricity that you use at any given time. I have a lot of electronics, so I am very careful to make sure I never run too many things on at same time, or leave things I don’t need on. 5 month power bill for my flat (bedroom, study, living room, kitchen, bonus room) was 2700 TWD
I had a similar question, my landlord is charging me 7TD per kwh and that appears to be rather expensive right? The only thing on this one meter is the air conditioner and its already used almost 100kwh in like three days at this heat projecting to about a 7000/month air conditioner bill. Can someone let me know if that is too much and what kind of recourse I can have! Thanks in advance for the help!
wow. 7nt is really high. do you have the ac on 24/7? turn it to 26 degrees. it’s not all that cool, but not unbearable hot. it’ll save you tons of money. as for recourse, i’m assuming you signed a contract, so i don’t think there’s much you can do. maybe you can negotiate for a better rate or move to another place.
Try to cut down on electricity you use with your aircon. 100khw/24/3=1.4kw which means YES you keep the A/C on all day long! (An aircon machine consumes about 1kw, plus some other appliances so there should be 1.4kw you use in your apartment.) But the price TWD7 per unit is too expensive. Try to buy an electrical fan and turn down the a/c. You can get a fairly nice fan at TWD500. If you keep the fan on all day long for the whole month, it only costs you 50kwh at most!!!
Also try to turn off ALL electrical appliances and see if the meter is running. If it is running, then your landlord is ripping you off with his own appliances charged on your bill.
7nt a kwh is too much, even at maximum usage its around 5nt per kwh. My advise is move and ask about the electricity bill… Some landlords likes to tie like an entire building to one account which means the electricity rate will always be around 5nt per kwh in the summer because there is no way for the entire building to consume less than 1000kwh a month. I don’t know why they do it. Taiwanese aren’t known for seeing savings over a long period of time though, and it may be because Taipower charges a setup fee for each account. You should use around 250-300 kwh every 2 month for a bedroom with the AC running that means if that room has its own account (which is unlikely) the rate should be around 2.5nt a kwh with a bill of around 1000nt or so for those two months.
There is no way your AC is running continuously though because soon enough the pipes will frost up and the cooling capacity will decrease a LOT. Check to make sure someone isn’t stealing your power.
Looking at my bill ending June 21st, it seems I used 453 kWh for a total of nt$1001.[/quote]
Looks like standard rate depands of the usage of power and goes from 2.10 per kwh for the first 110kwh up to 3.97 kwh if you use more than 700kwh per month in winter or in summer than 5.10 per kwh. So he essentially charges you the maximum of 5NT per unit and earns money if you use less than 700kwh per month (which you reach if you have for examply conctantly 1000W power used 24/7 through the month…).
); she doesn’t cook at home; and I’m at work for 8 hours a day. We only use AC in one room last year, but this year my computer room has AC and next year my daughters bedroom gets AC when she gets booted out of our room into the 3rd floor room because of the new addition in January to the Okami Clan. I generally give my wife a $10K bump for summer electric and that seems to chill her out. If it wasn’t for the kid and me, she’d sweat it out.