How to register to pay for electricity and gas

Guys,
i need a bit of help. can anybody tell mw who i need to register with to pay for my electric and gas? It's been switiched on since i moved into the flat but i havent received a bill so i'm assuming i need to register with the providers.
Any details on how to do this would be much appreicated.
Thanks!
helen

As your profile doesn't reveal where you are it's rather difficult to say. It also depends on who you get your gas/electricity from eg. Yello etc. Ask your landlord.

Errr, the topic was posted under "Life in Berlin" so I assume HelenT is in Berlin, wouldn't you say?

You might find that you're paying it already in your rent. At the end of the year you would then get your Abrechnung. YOu then have to either pay the difference or you get money back.

As one guy said, check with your landlord first whether this is the case, if not call Vattenfall.

If you need to contact a supplier yourself...

The gas and electricity meters should have a number on them, you need to provide this number and your address (plus possibly the location of a flat in a building, e.g. 2nd floor) to a provider of your choice. The provider will then be able to bill you for usage.

To choose an electricity provider, check out e.g. http://www.billiger-strom.de. (I presume there must be a similar site for gas providers).

The meter numbers may have been written down somewhere on your contract or other paperwork you received when taking over the flat (e.g. notes taken at your handover meeting). The meter reading when you moved in should also have been written down. You need to provide this old meter reading to the provider so they know how much you have used (you don't want to pay for the last resident's usage do you!).

You do not need to use the local statwerk provider, there is freedom of choice, e.g. you could live in Rosenheim, but buy your electricity from Flensburg WindStrom (made up name!) if they were the cheapest for your usage.

Ok, ok, I didn't see that.

marvellous, thanks for all this folks.

much obliged

another related question - if the electricity is already running in the flat, will the companies approach you, ie what motivation apart from honesty is there to actually contact the companies and sign up to receive bills.

You are renting the flat so give them a call and provide your paying data. You don't really think you can get the electricity for free, do you?

well no, although stranger things have happened. i am unfortunately quite busy and will be working out of belin for a few weeks so I guess I woukld like to know how urgent this is - i'm guessing not as long as I provide them with the initial meter reading.

It takes 5 minutes over the phone to do the anmeldung. But I trust you, you are sooooooooo busy an important that you do not have any time to do it.

your sarcasm is really so last decade - i hven't heard before you could register over the phone but somehow i doubt it since you are supposed to bring passport etc. ciao

Well, it is your word against mine, but I did it already twice over the phone and I am moving again in 8 weeks and I already took over the electricity payments and I did it over the damn Internet.

Hey, I just came to Germany and I already know more than all of you living here for years and years!!!

I just wonder how oskr thinks he has to register with Vatenfall of whatever electricity he is using. If you "can not" do it over the phone/Internet then what? Where are the Vatenfall offices? Actually anyone has visited one? You know, you have to bring your passport with you ...

I just moved into a flat. If you know the device id and current measurement of the electricity meter and gas meter, then you can register online quickly, in a matter of minutes. FWIW, I registered electricity at vattenfall.de and gas at gasag.de - the same companies as the previous renter; I figured those would be okay. So really easy. It helps if you know the name of the previous renter, then you can fill that in in the online form and that helps them make the change.

Thanks to everyone on both posts who genuinely gave advice. As for Krieg - fuck you! You want to mock and insult me because I have a different attitude to you and don't know as much about Germany? Get a life. I have no idea why you are tolerated on this forum.

What a load of crap i have never had to take my passoprt with me to register with the electric company or a gas company.Gas or heating costs are normally included in your Nebenkosten but electricity never is.first i have heard of that.Your landlord should be bale to inform you to which company the electric is connected too and the gas too.But like i said normally gas is part of your nebenkosten

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Erm, I've done more than my share of flat-moving and electricity has always been included in my Nebenkosten!

Sorry in over 20 years of living here my Nebenkosten has always been for cold and hot water,heating bills,dustbins,chimney sweep and some other stuff.Electricity bills have always come on top of this.

It's pretty unusal for electricity costs to be included with the normal Nebenkosten, however, it does happen occasionally, most often when renting a so-called Einliegerwohnung, where granny used to live. In these cases there is usually only one meter for the whole house. The other case where it most often occurs is when flats are rented for an all-inclusive price (Warmmiete), although on many occasions these are also similar circumstances - single rooms or sub-lets in a normal house.

Well, I will happily bow to everyone's superior knowledge on this one, but as I say, I've only ever come across all-inclusive rent. (Except for the bl**dy TV license, that is.)

Hi,

We are new to Germany and am quite befuddled trying to understand how German gas bills seem to be around 4 times higher than in the UK, especially when we don't have a gas cooker and have a relatively small apartment.
I'm wondering if anyone can advise on cheapest suppliers - I'm manically emailing all the companies and have tried calling but as we have to do this in English at the moment it would be really good to know other peoples experiences.

Gasag supply us at the moment and want to charge around 100 euros a month, is this normal???

Gas is expensive in Germany because the gas companies managed to persuade the then government (in the sixties, I believe) to let them tie the price of gas to the oil price on the pretence of securing their investment in the necessary pipeline system (whatever happened to commercial risk?) and we all know what's happened to the price of oil!

If you've got an apartment and no gas cooker, how come you need gas anyway? In most blocks of flats the central heating/hot water system is common to all the flats, or are you in an old block where you have your own boiler - since I see you're in Kreuzberg, that's probably the case.

Theoretically, I believe you can now choose your gas supplier, but there is (still) no regulatory authority to control the transit prices for piping company A's gas through company B's pipeline (as far as I'm aware, I may be out of date!), so the competition doesn't really work yet. Probably the only thing you can do is make sure that you get an appropriate tariff and that the projected consumption seems reasonable. Why not use that as a chance to get to know some of your neighbours and ask those in similar flats how much gas they use.