Having finally mananged to download all the facts and figures… it’s clear that our usage of electricity did fall dramatically… in answer to the various lifestyle changes we’ve made during the past year. Hurrah.
and, as they’ve promised… EDF have adjusted the new monthly charges, taking account of that marked and regular reduction.
Phew… all’s well that ends well… for now 
We have a terrible situation with EDF, and I am grateful for any help you or others might be able to suggest. Recently we had a Linky Meter installed, and that is when the problem began. Since 2019 we had only ever got estimated electricity except for one time, which showed a consumption that amounted to around Euro 250 a month. And the estimated bills after that were around Euro 300 per month. After Linky, we suddenly got a bill that has raised our monthly bill up to almost Euro 800 per month. They are demanding an immediate back payment of Euro 4,000. We have tried to talk with them on the Help Line but get nowhere. We have filed a formal complaint and are waiting to hear. The two months are up and we hope to move ahead with the claim. We tried to get an Enedis serviceman to come to check the meter, but they keep stalling. Our electrician is going to come next week and certify the appliances that are connected to electricity. We are a two-person household with eletric heaters in the main house, floor heating in a guest house, and then just the normal stuff (washer, dryer, dishwasher). For the past 10 years we are almost always gone for at least three months in winter. We are desperate now !
One thing we thought to do is to stop the automatic deduction from our bank account so they can´t withdraw the Euro 4,000 in two weeks. Is that a good idea?
You may ask, why did you wait so long after several years of estimates, etc. The truth is my husband was in charge of this and for the past three years he has been struggling with a very bad heart condition. He`s been in and out of hospital for various operations. I was focusing on earning our income (he does not work any more), and he did not share the info about EDF with me. He ignored it because he could not deal with the stress, felt I already had enough to deal with ,and thought since the bill was not too high, it could go on that way. Now I have taken over and all we want is to try to solve it and get back some peace of mind. We do have an extremely low electricity rate from our original contract in 1996. I believe we only pay 9 cents per Kilowatt hour and then there are the Red days. EDF has tried for several years to get us to change, and my husband believes they are using this tactic to put us under pressure.
I would be so grateful if anyone could help with suggestions for how to deal with our problem.
If I were you, I would be at my bank pronto and officially ask them to cancel any direct payments to the electric suppliers, that could tip you into Bank of France territory if you go over what you have in the account and you don’t want that! You cannot be completely cut off from electricity, you must be left with a very bare minimum in order to survive and personally, I would go to the local mairie and get them to intervene for you, they have more clout. You mention Red days, that sounds like Tempo tariff and never having wanted that system, I believe the costs spiral horribly if you use the power on those days. Unfortunately here in France, the onus is on the property owner to be responsable for consumption and payment and you must have had a meter reading before you had a Linky fitted, it is the law they must be able to enter to read at least once per year to confirm readings. €250/month is not unheard of for two people using everything electrical, I was at least €150/month in my old house living alone during the winter months when the electric heating was on for weeks but now the heat pump is costing me a fraction of that. Don’t ignore this, it will get worse, see the bank and cancel payments and try and speak to EDF or get someone else to do it for you.
Hi @Cadouin24 and welcome to the forum, which I hope will be able to help you 
.
I can’t really give you much help on you’re current situation re the inflated bills and why that is, but what I can advise you of is your use of the Tempo tariff. The amount you pay on the White and Blue days may look very appealing, but if you have a home that is all electric, as I do, you may find that you are paying more than you should, especially if your ‘normal’ expenditure on electricity is €250-300 per month. This is probably why EDF have been trying to persuade you to change tariff. I’m not sure if you’re bill will show separate amounts of electricity used and cost for each of the three tariffs on Tempo, @Badger is probably the best person to talk about this. If you can get a breakdown of the costs for each then looking at this should give you an idea as to whether Tempo is right for you.
Thank you so much for your prompt reply. I am on it now and following closely. As far as the Red days (10 x as much) increase is concerned on the old tarif, we have an automatic cut-off button on those days that reduced usage to only the bare minimum nd cut off the heaters.
I was worried about cancelling the automatic deduction from the bank account because someone told me it would affect my credit rating and is not a good thing to do. But I agree with you in any case : we have to stop them immediately.
Unfortunately, we did not have the live reading of the meter every year.
I agree Euro 250 is within the range we can accept, but Euro 800 per month is crazy.
Thanks for your clear words. I will do my best.
There are some useful threads on the forum. One has the experiences of someone who had exactly your problem.
Here is his last post, which explained what happened. Food for thought.
Where is your Linky ?. You must, starting now, read the meter regularly. I can’t now find the document that shows you which of the info screens you need to read on the Linky for Tempo. Again, @Badger should be able to help you with this.
Another thought and I have known three people affected by this in the past. Is it possible your supply is also being used by a neighbour and you are paying for it? It happened to one of my neighbours pre-Linky where her other neighbour was getting free electricity courtesy of my friend and neither of them knew about it until the bills started increasing rapidly.
The Linky is in the house.
Yes, I am reading the meter regularly, and I have the Linky App on my phone.
Thanks so much for your help.
Some bullet point advice & questions…
Talk to EDF ask to be billed “chiffres réel” on a monthly basis(this is now possible with a Linky. This means you will be billed for your actual consumption, rather than their inflated idea of what it should be.
At the same time work the figures back to see what their kWh estimates have been, compared with your actual readings. If they are wildly different in your favour (which it sounds like they should be) they will owe you money, which could be left with them as a credit which will pay off future bills.
An average of 250€/month sounds high - are you sure that wasn’t a bi-monthly amount previously?
You mention “floor heating in the guest house” - is that electric?
You also mention a dryer. These are the single biggest “energievore” appliance if you only dry clothes that way.
How is your water heated?
My gut feeling is that the problem is one of administration. I’ve not come across a Linky misreading; a common fault is that they just fail to read anything, & estimates get generated instead.
Your electrician should be able to establish if there are any electricity stealing fairies at work, & also to verify if the Linky is wildly wrong. The trick is to turn everything off, read the meter, then run a resistive load of 1kW for one hour & the meter should increase by one unit. If you use a heater as the load then it needs to be turned to full to avoid the thermostat turning it off, or a pair of old school 500w floodlights will do the trick.
We have a gite which we lived in over a few winters and we have electric underfloor heating in it. Lovely, but it was costing us 300€ per month based on heure pleine heure creuse.
We stopped living in it! And it’s normally now only let in the summer.
Dear Badger,
Thank you so much for your response. We do have an electrician coming on Wednesday.
Here is some more info I just received from my husband.
The Linky is registering “insane” usage.
For example, during the summer when there was no heating and normal usage, it registered 5,000 KW in 4 weeks.
Over 5 months including the summer it registered 35,000 KW
On one day when my husband had left to go abroad and there was no one else in the house, it registered 1,500 KW.
EDF has started billing us for almost Euro 900, and next month they are billing us for Euro 1,000.
In answer to your advice and questions
We have stopped the automatic debit from our bank account.
The guest house has a mono block heat pump with underfloor heating. When we go away for three months or so in winter, the heating is turned on to frost free
In the main house we have a 200 Litre very well insulated hot water boiler.
As you can see, the supposed usage is astronomical.
Linda
Dear Shiba,
Thanks for your post. We have cancelled the direct debit and I heed your warning about Bank of France.
We chose the Red days Tarif (EJP) because we are gone at least three or four months in the winter and hardly ever experience the EJP days. We also have automatic shutoff on the fuse box when an EJP Day happens.
If you see my very recent post, the usage is astronomical, sometimes hey say 1500 KW per day, etc.
We are going to be reading the meter very regularly and we have an electrician coming.
The fact is, it is impossible for this kind of usage to be happening, and we have to get to the bottom of what is causing it.
Any other info or suggestions are very welcome.
Linda
That is completely impossible I would say. That’s equivalent to 62,5Kw consumption constant for 24 hours. It’s not possible to be provided with that level of power as a domestic consumer. Surely, EDF should be able to realise this. 35,000Kwh over 5 months is also almost impossible as you would have to draw about 9.7Kw continuously, 24 hours a day for 5 months.
Yes, it is impossible. But that is exactly what is happening.
And EDF has not responded although we told them we are basically a 2-person household with the normal appliances.
We have sent a letter to their mediation board and after 2 months still nothing has happened.
Have you or anyone else you know delalt with the consumer protection organisations in France. We were thinking of going to see them.
Maybe we have to hire a lawyer?
Any recommendations from you or anyone else are welcome.
Linda
Sorry to labour the point, but have you spelled out to them, using the figures you have, just how impossible the readings are, and did you do the same to the mediation board ?
I haven’t , but I know that several people on this site have recommended France Services before if you need help.
I am very grateful for your questions.
As I mentioned earlier, I am only taking over this situation just now and so I am in the process of getting the history of what has been done so far.
We should know more this week when the electrician comes and we then have more data to present.
I will post more soon, hopefully.
This is a good tip about French Services. I will make an appointment with the person. She`s great.
Thanks again,
Linda
Isn’t there an equivalent of the UK’s ‘Which’ organisation which could help? Can’t remember what they are called at the moment.
I agree, it is insane. It does sound like a rogue Linky, especially as you had previous consumption to go on. Thats me taught.
I repeat my urge for you to go over to real usage billing.
One other thing; with electricity precision is all. When you are talking about your consumption you need to refer to kilowatt hours (kWh, with one kWh being a load of 1000 Watts running for one hour) rather than just kilowatts (kW) which is just a measure of electrical load any one instant.