Gas, Water and Electric Bills

We have just had our new monthly payments come through for our utility bills and they have worked out that between the 3 we have underpaid by €600 in 6 months and have "worked out" our new monthly standing orders which have gone up by at least €50 each in the last 3 years !!! I would understand if we had kids but its just the 2 of us!

We are with Entega. Has anyone else had a shock??

Do you get an itemised bill, if so where are the price increases? If you feel you have been overcharged ie. you havn't had any major changes in consumption, I would take it up with them, even Germans have been known to mess up their maths.

I'd check your meter readings against the bill to make sure there aren't any errors with the readings. One think to bear in mind is that gas prices in particular have gone up
considerably in the last year, this is because they are artificially linked to the price
of oil in Germany ...which is scandalous in it'self, Germany has the highest Gas prices
in Europe -no wonder the economy is on it's knees

Otherwise check which utility has the biggest increase and look for the culprit !

Cheers Neil, it is the Gas. Looks like we wil have to sit around a candle from now on and shower together!!

Same for us - our bill has gone up by 50% in all (that's electric, water, waste water and heating). Must get round to checking the bill.

I fear my bill will look pretty much the same. Last year I already had an underpaiment by 280€ in 6 months which increased my monthly rate by 75€ (I am single) and when I consider the massive price increases I suppose I'll go through some kind of a deja vu...

Just got ours out again and over a 3 month period (obviously when it was bloody freezing) we used 1000 units of gas (or pounds of gas or whatever they are counted in, gassy doo dars!! ) However looking at our reading today against when the guy came to read it last month we have only used 100+ due to the heating being off.

As always we will pray that in the next 6 months we are in the blue and not the red, and no doubt we will be as its summer, then the payments will go down and the whole thing starts again!! Unless we confine ourselves to one room.

If you're in rented accommodation, check the bills very carefully. I acted as "Verwalter" for a group of 48 flats in six houses for four years. The company responsible for calculating the heating and warm water charges, ISTA, (who operate nationswide) succeeded in giving me one correct bill for one house in the last year!

Speaking to other "Verwaltungsfirmen" the unanimous comment was " Oh, we don't check the bills, we just take them and split them appropriately amongst the flats"!