Charged for excess electricity in a flatshare

Hi,

I have been renting a room in an apartment in Munich belonging to a couple for almost a year now and will be leaving in a few days. My flatmate/landlord has just informed that because their monthly power bill has increased since I arrived and that I must pay the difference! Now this has come as a shock to me because when I moved in my understanding was that all bills were included as it was advertised as 'warm'. Unfortunately there is no written contract, we just had a verbal agreement which i understood as €350/month all inclusive plus 1 months bond with either party needing to give 30days notice.

So the question is, is my flatmate/landlord allowed to do this?

I know there are organizations/lawyers that deal with this stuff but I can't really afford it and want to see what the enlightened Toytown readers think before I consider that option.

Cheers, Matt

Yes, As util. prices increase these costs are normally passed along to the renters.
Do you really think your entitled to continue paying power prices from 2006 in 2007?
You do know they raised the cost of power, coal and oil something like 30-50% in that time right..

Are you a student? I had a rent contract problem once - I went to a lawyer who specialised in rental contract disagreements, he listened (free consultation)to my case and agreed to represent me. He then gave me a piece of paper on which he'd outlined the case which I took to a specific office - jurisamt? something along those lines - and they stamped it to agree they would cover all his costs in that particular case as I was a student. Sorry I can't remember this in more detail - I do remember it all worked out well in the end, and that a simple letter from the lawyer made the landlord back down. Good luck!

"Warmmiete" means that heating costs are included ... electricity is a different/separate matter, unless your room is electrically heated

I agree with miwild.

Wow, thanks for the quick responses guys


I had no idea that power rates up cause I don't pay any bills, but that is quite useful to know because he is trying to charge me the entire increase in the power bill even though I share the apartment with him and his wife. So do you think its fair that my rent should increase without notice and in fact retroactively just cause the cost of power goes up?


Yep I am a student, and that is good to know hopefully it doesn't get that far though.


Well before I moved in I asked if all the bills were included like power, water and internet and he said they were, I am certain of that. He is only trying to charge me for the difference between the power bills since I've been here and when they had previously rented out the room.

How much is the extra?
If it is over EUR 100, you might consider going to the Mieterverein.
But they will harge you and IF the contract you have (and a verbal contract can be legally binding under standardise conditions) meas you are liable for the costs then you have o pay them.

Depends how much it is and how much hassle you want really.

Is it an increase in usage? Or just in the billing amount?

If it is in usage, and they can show you the usage amounts for other months (before you moved in, so you can see it actually increased considerably since you moved in), it might really be he expected you to use less and thus cost less. Is there any way you could reduce your usage of electricity (do not leave electric products like TV computer etc. in standby, don't leave lights on etc)?

If the increase is in the billing amount but not in the usage, I would expect the increase to be split up evenly. (That is, divided by the number of people in the apartment.)

But yeah, as miwild said, Warmmiete per se does not include electricity. I had a contract (in my last apartment in Heidelberg) that did include electricity but my landlords kept the right to charge me extra if the bill went up a lot (they never did though).

But in the end, I agree with MonksTown, not sure how much it is, but if it isn't much, it may not be worth the hassle.

I guess this is a common trick. This happened to me twice in Berlin, in two separate apartments, and both times I had a very clear subletting agreement that did not hold me responsible for extra electricity or heating. The first time (WG), I agreed to split the extra because she was really being psycho about it (came to about 150 eur each), but the second time, I refused, on the advice of a lawyer friend I'd asked. She had wanted me to pay 350 euros extra. She was really very irritated and tried to pressure me into it but couldn't really threaten me with anything since the sublease was clear; I ignored her and left when the contract was up a month later. Nothing at all ever came of it.