Stadtwerke MĂĽnchen messes up electricity provider switch
If you don't want to pay extra, you have to switch energy suppliers from time to time. This should work easily online, but in Munich it can sometimes go wrong.
Loyalty pays off, but not with energy suppliers. Instead, they entice new customers with bonuses and discounts, but only pass on falling prices to existing customers with delays –, if at all. Anyone who stays with the same supplier for more than a year or two pays more. When the contract with his previous provider expired, Axel K. used a comparison portal to find a new tariff. In his suburb of the Bavarian capital, Stadtwerke München proved to be attractive with its "M-Strom" tariff.
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He was to pay just over 30 cents per kilowatt hour, plus a basic fee of 18.44 euros per month. With his assumed consumption of 2,000 kilowatt hours per year, the monthly down payment amounted to 77 euros. When the contract was concluded, he was to receive an immediate bonus of €83.70 and a new customer bonus of €125.
On May 14, Axel K. concluded the contract with Stadtwerke MĂĽnchen as his new supplier via the portal and at the same time instructed Stadtwerke to terminate the contract with his old supplier on his behalf. The very next day, he received a welcome letter from Stadtwerke by email, which once again listed the key elements of the contract. The next step would be to cancel his old contract for him. "You don't need to do anything else," it said right at the beginning of the letter in bold letters.
Great, thought Axel K., the switch seemed to be going smoothly. The impression was reinforced when he received confirmation from his current electricity supplier a day later that his contract with them would end on June 17 due to the termination. At the same time, he received another letter from Stadtwerke MĂĽnchen informing him that he could only be supplied by them from June 17, as his contract with his previous supplier was still running. Axel K. was aware of this and it was not a problem for him. The contract was supposed to be valid for 12 months from the start of supply anyway.
Hands in his lap
Now everything seemed to be settled for Axel K. and so he did exactly what his new supplier had advised him to do when it came to his electricity supply: nothing. On June 13, he was abruptly torn from this state of general satisfaction with the initiated change of provider by a letter from E.ON. The energy giant is the basic supplier in his area, as in many parts of Germany. This is the company with the most electricity customers in a grid area. The law obliges so-called basic suppliers to supply electricity on controlled terms to all those households that do not have a contract on the free market – for whatever reason.
A basic supply contract is concluded almost automatically. Notice periods of a few weeks apply, but the energy purchased usually costs considerably more. He had to pay over 38 cents for a kilowatt hour, a good 8 cents more than with his chosen supplier.
He immediately called Stadtwerke MĂĽnchen and wanted to know what this meant. They promised to call him back, but they never did. On June 17, the game was repeated, and the promised callback again failed to materialize. His new contract with Stadtwerke was supposed to start that day. As they did not respond to calls, Axel K. wrote an e-mail on June 28 asking for clarification. But the Munich company did not respond to this either. Instead of them, he now had the basic supplier E.ON on his proverbial back, and as regular readers of this column know, it's not easy to get rid of them (see c't 7/2023, p. 56).
On July 12, Axel K. also described his problem to the hotline of the comparison portal. All he heard from them was that the "specialist department" would get in touch. Unconvinced by this, the customer contacted c't. We looked at the documents and it was clear that Stadtwerke MĂĽnchen had probably acted in breach of contract by apparently not registering the customer with his local network operator. After his old supplier had duly registered the end of the contract there and he was now apparently without a contract due to a lack of notification by the new supplier, Axel K. was reported to the basic supplier by the network operator. Nowadays, these processes are fully automated and no one is involved.
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Binding contract
The contract had been effectively concluded, as the municipal utilities had expressly described their welcome letter of 15 May as a "contract confirmation". And they had also confirmed the start of supply. We therefore contacted the Stadtwerke MĂĽnchen press office on July 15 and asked for information on what had gone wrong in Axel K.'s case. We also wanted to know why no one had responded to his calls and emails and what else he should have done in order to benefit from the contractually agreed supply.
The following day, we received an answer from a spokeswoman for the municipal utilities: "Due to a misunderstanding in the communication between the market partners, the change of supplier has not yet taken place. Stadtwerke has since contacted the customer by telephone, apologized and initiated the change of supplier immediately. "As a concession", Stadtwerke MĂĽnchen will offset the SWM prices for the upcoming final bill from the basic supplier E.ON. This had also been discussed with the customer and confirmed to him in writing.
Shortly afterwards, Axel K. also informed us and forwarded the e-mail he had received in the meantime confirming the agreement. The change of supplier was actually completed on August 1. However, the fact that Stadtwerke later wanted to reimburse him for the additional costs that he would incur as a result of the two weeks of basic supply is by no means a "concession", but simply their contractual obligation.
Mistakes can happen anywhere, which is probably one of the few undisputed statements made by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. However, it is important that they are corrected. But this is precisely what energy suppliers are increasingly failing to do. No one is surprised that the customer service of windy middlemen who sell electricity as well as mobile and telephone contracts cannot be very good. But when even long-standing and solid municipal utilities such as those in the state capital of Munich are unable to offer decent customer service for justified contract complaints such as that of Axel K., this is very worrying.
Ignorance when you call
Experience shows that you don't even have to bother on the phone. Axel K. should have sent an e-mail immediately and copied in his own address or that of a friend so that the correspondence could be easily traced later. Letters to an energy supplier should also always be clearly and literally marked as "Consumer complaint under Section 111a EnWG", preferably in the subject line. This is because the Energy Industry Act stipulates that suppliers must respond to such complaints within four weeks.
This procedure is important if you subsequently have to contact the Federal Network Agency or an energy arbitration board with a complaint because the supplier has not responded or has not responded appropriately. As a rule, complaints are only accepted and processed there if you can prove that you have already contacted the company concerned without success.
(mho)
