From tranquility to panic and back
I woke up relaxed and cheery this morning, put the two furballs out to play on the patio, fixed myself breakfast, checked on my plants — the cayenne peppers are growing fast! — then came inside to turn on the computer and read my email.
“Envoi de votre facture Bleu Ciel d’EDF” was one subject. I thought to myself, “ah yes, they turned on my electricity a year ago today — that would be my invoice that accounts for any meter reading discrepancies with their estimates. But that’s odd, because no one has come to read my meter. Hm.” EDF is Electricité de France, and I had signed up for monthly payments (mensualisation) based on an estimate of electricity usage for my home size and appliances. I clicked on the link to my invoice.
“Facture du 08/06/2009 : 544,81€ pour une consommation estimée de 3.400kWh en heures pleines et 5.300kWh en heures creuses.”
In France, the decimal separator is a comma, and the dot is used to separate thousands (or sometimes just a non-breaking space, for instance 3 400 is three thousand four hundred). In other words, they were charging me five hundred forty-four euros and eighty-one centimes. I nearly passed out. Finally enough blood returned to my head for me to walk to the electricity meter and check it: since last year, I had actually used only 700kWh in heures pleines (regular hours, 11 centimes per kWh), and 1800kWh in heures creuses (low hours, 7 centimes per kWh, from 10:30pm to 6:30am, which is when I run the water heater and washing machine).
I phoned EDF, hands shaking from the adrenaline rush and subsequent relief, and worked it out. They had made a typo in both my address and my phone number, which is why a meter reader had never contacted me. I’ll still be charged the 544.81 euros in July, since according to the woman it’s automatic and can’t be cancelled, but EDF will then refund me. With the true meter readings, I won’t owe anything, and may even be refunded further (my calculations say about 40 euros in my favor, accounting for the twelve months I’ve been paying their previous estimates).
So if you’re in France and using EDF’s facture électronique, pay close attention. This is not the first time they’ve messed up — last year I tried signing up online, got two confirmations, no one came, and then I had to call twice to get a worker to come hook up my apartment. This year I almost didn’t look at my invoice. The only reason I did was because it seemed strange that no one had ever done meter readings in the past year — usually they come to read meters once every six months.
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June 6th, 2009 at 15:20
How long will it take to get your refund back? Good grief, that’s a lot of money to have to fork over as a temporary solution to their administrative snafu(s).
Automatic billing can’t be canceled? I hear this excuse pretty frequently and I think it’s hogwash.
I had a situation in which an automatic charge couldn’t be canceled. It was a lot of money, charged by mistake, you know the story. I went to my bank in advance and asked that the charge be rejected. The bank fee for this service was $25. In that particular situation, I would rather pay $25 than fork over a wad of cash (that would be used as a credit on that account for many months to come).
June 6th, 2009 at 15:36
I could reject it through my bank too, but I would have to pay for it. The woman told me that I would be refunded as soon as the charge went through, i.e. on the same day. I asked her twice if that really meant the same day and she assured me it did. And just in case, I have a line of credit that’s nearly paid off, that I can shunt to my bank account temporarily in order to cover the charge. But yeah, it’s a darn good thing I have that line of credit, otherwise I’d pay to reject the charge.
I’m still wondering how the hell they got my address and phone number wrong since last year, their worker phoned me before coming over (so he had the right number) and of course, came to my place, so had the right address. Not to mention the outrageous electricity estimate. I mean, nine thousand kilowatt hours?! A 2000 watt (2kW) water heater would have to run — not just be on, but run — 24 hours a day for 185 days to reach that. I never know whether they do this stuff on purpose or are completely and hopelessly disorganized — having done work for public utilities before, the latter actually isn’t so hard to believe. (That’s also why I can believe the automatic charge that can’t be cancelled, though it is indeed ridiculous.)