EDF Estimated Bills

[cheminot]

We took possession of our house in January and stayed there for a week. As it was b****dy freezing! at the time and the house had been unoccupied for some time we used the electric heating virtually round the clock that week.

After we left the meter was read  by EDF and as we had signed up for a monthly 'prelévement' we were sent a bill for around 80 euros which was automatically deducted from our bank account. So far so good, this is when it starts to go pear-shaped!As the meter is only read twice a year our next bill was an estimate which was 380 euros! not bad considering we had not been living there!  We conclude that as our consumption for one week was around 80, EDF had just multiplied by 4 and added a bit on and decided that that was our monthly consumption.

We duly phoned our neighbour who read our meter for us and armed with this logged onto the EDF website and used the link to send our meter readings. Problem was that as our actual meter reading was less than their estimate it refused to accept our readings.

Next step, we wrote a letter to EDF explaining that it was our maison secondaire and as a result we were not using that much electricity enclosing our meter readings and the date they were taken.

Got a letter back yesterday which says effectively; tough luck, our estimated bills cannot be changed until the meter is read again in July so in the meantime you will just have to pay up!

This means we will end up paying over 1000 euros for electricity we have not used until August when hopefully we will get a rebate.

The only way I think we could have avoided this is by signing up to the online meter reading service as soon as we bought the house but we didnt know it existed then, nor would we have necessarily thought it was worth doing.

Anyone else had this problem and were you able to do anyhting about it?

Cheminot

 

[KathyC]

We had a similar situation as this, but complicated by the fact that the bills had been sent to the address in France rather than our UK home.  The main differnce was that we hadn't arranged to pay monthly as we knew our usage would fluctuate dramatically.   We didn't visit France between October and Easter and found a pile of increasingly annoyed correspondence from EDF awaiting us. We went to their office in Bergerac and explained what had happened and gave our meter readings. As nothing had been paid in the 7 months since we bought the house,, they asked us to pay these months' abonnements there and then. We also had to go back a couple of days later after they had recalculated our bill. We therefore paid 150E rather than the 500E estimate. We found the woman at EDF to be very helpful and it was remarkably simple to sort things out.

[parsac23]

Yesterday I plucked up courage and rang the number at the top of our EDF bill and in very slow french managed to give a meter reading to the young lady and she took the details and that was that, it remains to be seen whether or not this results in an ammended bill, watch this space.

[Clarkkent]

I suspect you may pleasantly surprised.

My bills are usually estimated. I visited my maison secondaire at Easter, noted the meter reading when I locked up and sent a note to the local EDF office with the reading.

Yesterday I received an amended bill containing a refund of Euro38

[suein56]

***Yesterday I plucked up courage and rang the number at the top of our EDF bill and in very slow french managed to give a meter reading to the young lady and she took the details and that was that, it remains to be seen whether or not this results in an amended bill, watch this space.***

When we first received estimated EDF bills in our rented house it was evident that the previous occupiers had used a lot more electricity than we did, so I plucked up courage, rang EDF and gave our exact readings over the phone and although the prélèvement took EDF's estimated amount from our bank account it was followed a few days later by an adjusting credit. Et voilà it works!

Sue

[Sunday Driver]

When we first opened our electricity account, I found that the prelevement based on future consumption was overestimated by around 25%.  So I prepared a full schedule of my likely consumption using the EDF website domestic appliance calculator and asked them to reduce the prelevement.  They seemed pleasantly surprised that I'd gone to this trouble and immediately reduced the payment.

[Benjamin]

We signed up to EDF's "you send us your actual readings" service in March this year. The confirming email seems to say that they'll send us a reminder email 10 days before the estimated bill is due.

Just received the estimated bill for the end of April and no email prior to that. So, either my French is worse than I thought it was and I've misunderstood what was supposed to happen, or EDF's system failed to send the email. Either way a visit to their office later this week ( and an excuse to have lunch out in Les Sables d'Olonne ) will sort it out.

Benjamin

[supersid]

cheminot , hi! we had the same hassle.took possession of our house in POINTRIEUX - brittany on 15/12/ 05 and stayed 5 days . received a bill for   50 euros +- sent cash as we had no french bank a/c which they received..we were over for easter 10 days went to see them + they demanded 216 euros asap which we paid.we trust sanity will prevail after the next meter reading. also our house had been empty for  7months prior to us buying.not as bad as your bill but interesting!  sid