It has probably all been said already but the way I understand it is (as happened similarly to my mother and her gas consumption) EDF were happy to accept your €70 direct debit since 2012 and have only just decided to do an actual reading - perhaps when the control box was changed. If you still think you should only be paying about €70 per month then try and arrange to pay what they say you owe either immediately or in say 2-4 instalments. This may take a few letters or calls! However, if you do not sort it out quickly you may be paying €220 for years and then be in credit (lucky them with your money!) for a few more years before they read the meter. You can give an actual reading on the internet whenever you want now if you sign up. Hope this has not confused you further.
Norman, EDF will send you a detailed breakdown of your next schedule of payments for the coming year… they have sent mine with their end of year balancing statement whe they take their actual reading… it’s true that they will over estimate your consumption, but at year end will balance it out… you can contest the payment plan, and they will agree to change it if need be… i’m not in favour of the utilities, but have not been ripped off in my 8 yrs here…
if you have the digital metering device, there is a facility for you to do your own real time consumption test… not sure which sequence on the buttons, long time since doing mine… but i think it is the 7th press tht makes the readings set to zero, then resume countin in real time. use a stop watch for timing the release of the button until the first unit is shown, do the maths for i minute then hour to find Kwh… don’t forget, digital clocks on ovens, and other “Forgotten” power uses will record unless you turn off all consumers…
Ian,
that invoice states Period 23/07/2012 to 22/03/15 - 2012???
Our online account investigation has also been as clear as mud, wasn't worth the six attempts at using the provided Password, which further drove my wife mad.
We are awaiting the electrician to come tonight as he seems to know what he is talking about - albeit non-complimentary to EDF!
Logs when we were in the Jura and had a big glass encased 'open' fire proved very expensive as we used about 4-5 'stairs (about 1.5cu.m ea) at €75,00 each over the Winter period - €375, and stack 'em yourself, so we didn't find that exactly cheap either. One of the reasons we moved to warmer climes.
My wife has two of these oils filled radiators on the go in conjunction with the halogen heaters and as fast as I turn them down to the thermostat setting next time I go by they have been turned up to full (Fool?) setting. She has tried to assure me they are economical to run in preference to the log burner, which currently we only light in the evening when we are both in the lounge. The TV is constantly left on whether she is in the room, or indeed the house, or not and this alone has caused numerous disagreements over the years.
On a technical point does anyone know what the values are when the rotary geared wheel in the meter does one complete revolution. Clocked it the other day when taking the reading and it took it more or less exactly one minute to do one revolution. I will have to resort to isolating everything and turning one item on at a time to see what is consuming the most power so the counter value would be handy to see what items send it whizzing round the most. The old style meters with the multiple clocks were easier to read when carrying out this sort of investigation as they gave fine detail as opposed to these which don't go down past the decimal point.
This is the front page of the invoice so why is there a gap between this invoice dated the 26/03/2015 and the next period stated as being 22/05/2015 to 21/09/2015? I am totally confused. I always check the meters as soon as I get the invoice and some reading are up and some are down but the difference between actuals and estimates have never been sufficient to warrant changing them This is something else this time.
If anyone can make head or tail/tale of this piece of work from EDF I would appreciate some guidance on this latest invoice. It would appear they have reimbursed something (why?) and it looks like they want this invoice paid up front for the next period. I will post the front page in a minute or two. This is all as clear as mud. I am about to go back through all of my invoices back to May 2011 and knock up a spreadsheet so that I can get some idea of what is going on before I approach EDF. I have never had any luck getting through on the English speaking help line but will have to try and resolve what is going on here or resort to sending the query by recorded mail as I have found that e-mail seems to be hated by all of the French Utility Companies as you very rarely get a response.
Hi Doreen,
I see your thinking and overall I can agree with it, but for me psychologically I have a problem with large bills appearing (almost) unexpectedly, which is why I can just about forget about them as part of monthly outgoings. This is why this lot came as a shock, and it is interesting to read of the various strokes EDF (and probably others) are pulling on us.
My wife is a highly organised person, unlike me, and usually picks up on things like this pretty promptly. She is the woman you see checking off the till invoice when you leave a Supermarket - and picks up 'errors' on about 6 out 10 visits - and never in our favour (surprise, surprise?)
I helped set-up an online bank in Budapest a few years ago, and learned a lot about the profits made by banks and other entities make on even OVERNIGHT transactions, so your consciousness of how they work with Other People's Money is well-founded. Even collectively holding a few million collective euros for a few hours can net huge sums in profits.
Ripping us off in the process is just part of the game. What we never had (profits) can't affect us as we haven't LOST anything either. We are the sheep to be shorn and to be grateful for it.
Good that it is not, but there are too many of them and that was too close to what 'X' was trying to do with us yesterday. Sarah's advice there is pretty good, fortunately we have nothing that is really expensive to run. Our one and only oil heater is only used in extremis and even then with the timer on so never more than two hours during the coldest part of the night when the CH goes low - until somebody gets up and feeds it logs.
I also read my meter every 2 months when asked to do so by edf (or whenever), and they check it twice a year. That way I saw last year that my meter had broken. They replaced it and I had a letter with my consumption over the past two years on which they figured out what I had to pay. I got a refund. I suppose it's a little bit of a hassle every 2 months but at least I know what's going on.
The pomp a chaleur hadn't been serviced for a while, needed re gassing and motor bearings replaced, so it was losing efficiency, apparently down to 2:1 from the expected 5:1. We are on our 2nd PAC for our pool, same/similar problems but it was 7 years old and uneconomical to repair
Our main heating is by logs from the village forest, but we hedge our bets, and have to keep the house from cooling too far during our visits to the UK. Pompe a chaleur works fine in Spring and Autumn (ours is air/air) but is less economical when the weather is really cold, so we have installed old-fashioned storage radiators full of bricks, which heat up at cheap rate overnight and provide background heating during the day. While we were away in Jan and Feb this year the storage rads kept the old stone house between 12 and 16 degrees. We use an Owl meter to see what our consumption is, and this helps to identify what is gobbling the energy.
We pay EDF every two months when they send us a bill - they email us for a reading and estimate if we don't respond. Had similar experience with Scottish Power in UK at late Mum's flat - they seem to think they are a savings bank first and energy provider second, because if she wanted to pay quarterly she had to pay a higher rate per kwh, so she paid monthly and they upped it quite unnecessarily every quarter. When Mum died they owed her several hundred pounds in overpayment. If EDF are playing the same game on monthly accounts I'd suggest renegotiating with them and only paying the bills, not filling their coffers each month.
With any heating system you have to consider the up-front costs of installation AND the running costs. We could have installed a full central heating system but the money we saved by not doing so (estimates were for 30k euros plus!) will pay for so much electricity over so many years that we decided to do without a plumbed system. A neighbour paid for electric convector radiators throughout but never dares run them.
We run several laptop computers constantly, some with monitors, and the TV tends to be on while we aren't watching it, so we could economise but aren't panicking yet. This is the way we like to live, other economies can be made before we curtail our IT activities!
Re telephone cold-calls. Yes we get these, but recognise either 'Privé' that pops up or 06 numbers (mobiles?), so whilst they are a nuisance as we get seven or eight of these a day, we simply don't answer them, so catching this EDF one was almost by chance. However getting calls from EDF is not unusual in our experience - as in the case of changing the control panel - hmmm, now THERE's a thought? As with France Telecom EDF seem to use Contractors to do the actual work, and although we asked about setting for 'creuses' times he told us with the new system this was not available. This was not queried by the pompe installer who was 'helping' the installation, so we accepted this as normal.
We now read from the EDF site that it IS possible and can save some 40% on bills! Now this really annoys me that not only have we been lumped with high bills, not one person who called us even mentioned this fact. Talk about 'Caveat Emptor' but on Utilities it's almost criminal.
Back to cold-calls by telephone, as a former Head of Direct Marketing for JWT in Australia, I NEVER, EVER gave approval for these programmes as I knew way back then that they were almost totally counter-productive (just about the same as irritating 'pop-ups' on the computer!).
However what we must now recognise is that in many instances the main thrust is not to sell anything but just augment the 'click-thru rate' - which is why often when the telephone is picked up the line is disconnected. This 'rate' is used to promote time sales to major companies to 'demonstrate' how many calls that operator generates or has generated on a project. Another now long-term scam. Incidentally if you ever wonder how your name appears on so many lists is iis simple - despite all the 'claims of non-divulgence to third-parties' that is pure fertiliser! Everyone from Facebook to Hotmail sell their client or user lists to all and sundry (and don't bet on your bank not doing it either!)
It's the world we live in, sad as it seems.
I forgot!! I don't believe this is a scam it is terrible working practice by EDF but please stand up and fight like us don't be scared of big companies
We have had the same as you! new counter put in then a a massive bill. The guy who changed the counter told us something was wrong we these types of counters and they could catch fire( I don't believe the fire bit i think thats was so we would allow him to change counter) and from that point onwards our bill would increase slightly as the counter now works correctly. NO that didn't happen a back dated bill arrived we went all around the houses with EDF on the phone and got no where. We found a site for the equivalent of a ombudsman who advise us first to write a letter of objection and send by recorded delivery which we did and they also advise to get all invoice from at least 7 sevens years ( which is ok for us as we run a business and have to keep all documents but i know that would be the case for all) We are at present 4 weeks on still waiting for a reply and walking on egg shells!! If i were you i would query the change of counter there seems to be something dodgy going on .....
Mark, one of the major bones of contention in this house was the decision to fit one of these fairly soon after we moved in. I couldn't get my wife to understand amortisation of the €12,000 to fit before we got the 'lower running costs'. I was even less impressed to be told that we would still need oil when the temprature got too low and the pump became inefficient. Maybe we were unlucky in the choice of installer, although at the time he was 'highly recommended' but in the past two years at start-up time after the Summer, it has been a nightmare getting the dam' thing up and running. I am not sure that they are that efficient in old houses anyway, too many cracks and ill-fitting frames etc. Personally we should have had the windows and doors replaced which would have been far cheaper and stayed with the oil fired central heating.
However that's the past, and I agree that rising costs are a mjor factor these days - even though I still puzzle as to why electricity in France costs the same as in Germany apparently where they have now phased out nuclear. I seem to recall the whole argument about Nuclear was cheap, clean supply? The lies we are told eh?
Sorry about the typos, a certain amount of agitation in the household here Brian as well! The old 'blame game? Maybe this is what these sting merchants enjoy? Sick buggers that they are?
Thanks for the input folks! I do take on board all the scam info, but we did actually phone EFF from the number shown on our last invoice, so are pretty sure we are talking to the right people. They also told us about the scam before checking our details, but sadly the information seems correct.
That said I have also latched onto the comments re. the oil-bath radiators and fear for at least a couple weeks when the Pompe a chaleur was not working we did use two of these a lot, and maybe that is the enemy. I also know that EDF do 'estimate' invoices and from what I have found in earlier days this is done from estimations on the highest consumption nt the average. However, they do say this is for usage not estimated usage, so that doesn't really explain it.
On the other hand reading some of the documentation advised by Sarah and that has been very interesting certainly about the usage of older domestic appliances eg plus 10-15 years, and recently my wife has been saying the freezer cabinet seems to be frosting up almost daily and that is over ten years old. So some ivestigation is no bad thing, and we have learned we can access our account details online which hopefully will give us a better dateline to the peaks they referred to. We know exactly when we used the oil-bath plug-in radiators for example. So that is the project for this morning.
Thanks for the input though, as even though we are fairly sure this isn't a sting - unless it's by EDF (possible?), it is good to be advised when these things occur anyway.
Yes David, oil filled or not €100 per week is around 2kw per hour not at all unusual. Cold old stone building may look nice and chocolate boxy but they are so poor when time for heating, as indeed are you after heating.
Margaret, you live in fear of telesales and scammers you have a special ring? That is so sad that we must live our lives like that, about time the practice of hassling by phone was outlawed.
David Matthews, what Norman does not say exactly is whether they called back the number that called or another, actual EDF number different to the one that call came on. EDF have said there is a scam of this kind, other people are experiencing it and dismissing it as not a scam remains to be seen.
Norman my desktop PC on 24hrs and not powering off after 10 mins etc uses 2.4kw/24 hours.
In hour usage termas:
Putting the PC to sleep after 10 mins drops the power to negligible 1-2 watts
Lap top 36watts, standby 10watts (mainly the power supply getting warm)
Fridge uses about 70watts, freezer 90watts,