Counted up: Excessive bill due to defective electricity meter
If a meter fails, suppliers estimate consumption. Suppliers and meter operators shift responsibility back and forth, with consequences for customers.
- Tim Gerber
This is an article from our magazine section Caution, customer!, which first appeared in c't 5/2024 on February 23, 2024.
Werner H. had been purchasing electricity for his household from Energiegut GmbH, a utility company belonging to Stadtwerke Duisburg, for a good half decade. His consumption was stable at almost exactly 5,000 kilowatt hours per year, which is roughly the average for a four-person household. There were never any problems with the billing. Once a year, the energy company requested the meter reading, which Werner H. read from the old but reliable meter and sent in by post. A few weeks later, he received his annual bill.
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The readings were taken at the beginning of May each time. Between May 7, 2017 and May 7, 2020, the customer had consumed just over 15,000 kilowatt hours in total, and the last meter reading was 281,579 kilowatt hours. In 2021, the meter reading was lost for reasons that are no longer comprehensible, so the energy supplier based its annual bill on a statistically determined consumption, as provided for in Section 40a (2) of the German Energy Industry Act (EnWG). The result was a realistic 5722 kilowatt hours for the period from May 2020 to May 2021.
On May 1, 2022, Werner H. read the meter again and it now showed a completely inexplicable 351,861 kilowatt hours. Since the last reading two years ago, Werner H. should therefore have consumed 70,282 kilowatt hours of electricity. After deducting the 5722 kilowatt hours already paid with the bill from May 2021, the Duisburg energy supplier still wanted to have paid 64,644 kilowatt hours according to the bill from January 19, 2023, which resulted in a bill amount of a staggering 16,163 euros after deducting the discounts already paid. From February 2023 onwards, the customer was now supposed to pay down payments of €3,697 per month for the electricity consumption of his average household.
Horrendous bill
Werner H. immediately objected to the exorbitant bill by email and asked for his electricity meter to be checked immediately. The Duisburg suppliers debited the invoice amount at the beginning of February, whereupon Werner H. recalled the direct debit via his bank on February 10 and wrote to the energy supplier again and asked for a check. He was prepared to pay an advance payment of 300 euros until the matter was finally clarified, but he was unable to pay the almost 4000 euros demanded.
On the same day, the customer also informed the network operator, Westenergie AG, which is part of the e-on Group, objected to the metering of the electricity meter and also asked Westenergie to check it. The meter was an old model built in 1988 with an electromechanical Ferraris counter. These meters are actually considered to be quite reliable and such outliers are extremely rare.
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As he received no reply to his letters from February, Werner H. sent letters to both companies on March 3 reminding them to check the electricity meter. All he received in response from Energiegut on April 26 was an "immediate" termination of his electricity supply contract with effect from May 19, 2023.
At the beginning of April, an appointment was made with Westenergie for an inspection of the meter on April 17. In a letter dated 2 May, Westenergie Metering GmbH sent the customer the metering certificate, which showed "that the meter did not meet the requirements set out in the administrative regulation 'Gesetzliches Messwesen – Allgemeine Regelung' (GM-AR)", as stated in the letter from the responsible metering point operator. The test report showed measurement deviations of more than 226 percent. However, the test period was only two hours, so it cannot be ruled out that the meter has delivered significantly larger incorrect measurements over the two-year period.
However, the two energy companies were not prepared to make any corrections to the consumption bill. So Werner H. took his problem to the energy arbitration board on 6 May. It opened arbitration proceedings on 8 May and informed Werner H. of the file number 9566/23. In July 2023, the conciliation body informed him that the utilities involved had now been contacted and should respond to the matter within three weeks.
In October, the conciliation body announced that no agreement had been reached with the companies in the first stage, meaning that the procedure was now entering the second stage. In this stage, the conciliation body is supposed to make a conciliation proposal in accordance with the rules of procedure. This has not yet happened, although the proceedings are supposed to be concluded within three months.
Many questions
At the end of December, Werner H. contacted the editorial team with his rather abstruse case and presented us with all of his bills as well as the letter with the meter's test report. We then contacted the press offices of Westenergie and Duisburger Versorgungs- und Verkehrsgesellschaft mbH, the parent company of electricity supplier Energiegut, on January 9 and asked numerous questions about the nature of the meter and the data exchange between the parties involved in Werner H.'s case. Why had the customer's contract been terminated despite his demonstrably justified objection to the abnormal bill? Why had the meter operator not informed the energy supplier about the meter failure?
Time and again we receive emails from readers complaining about poor service, unfair warranty conditions and exorbitant repair prices. Some of these complaints are obviously unjustified because the customers have somewhat exaggerated expectations. On closer analysis, much of it turns out to be the everyday behavior of overly calculating companies in the IT sector.
Sometimes, however, we also receive reports of downright hair-raising cases that make it clear how some companies treat their customers. In our "Caution, customer!" section, we report on such aberrations, injustices and dubious business practices. As a customer, you will find out what you can expect or sometimes even fear from the company in question before you make a purchase. And perhaps our reports will also prompt one or two providers to behave in a more customer-friendly and accommodating manner in future.
If you would like to share such a bad experience with us, please send a brief description of your experience in chronological order to: vorsichtkunde@ct.de.
We received an answer from Energiegut on January 16: "Our specialist department is currently processing the case. We would like to correct the bill as soon as possible and send Mr. H. a corrected bill. Unfortunately, we are still awaiting data from the grid operator and Westenergie Metering GmbH, which we have requested. However, we have not yet received any responses to either written or telephone requests for information. As soon as we have the necessary information, we will finalize the invoice correction and send Mr. H. a corrected invoice."
We confronted Westnetz AG with this statement on January 25. After some back and forth, we then received meaningful information on January 31: The in-house complaints management department had discovered that Westenergie had made a mistake. Normally, a control reading should have taken place three months after the meter change in April 2023 so that a certain data basis for consumption would be available after the meter change. This reading was commissioned in December and has now been prioritized again.
The meter from 1988 had been calibrated every five years as prescribed. The last calibration took place in 2019 and was valid until 2024. Following an analysis of the specific case, the electricity consumption will now be corrected on the basis of the error findings. However, this had still not been done by the editorial deadline.
The liberalization of the energy market was once accompanied by the promise that private providers would be more customer-friendly and flexible than the old-style state-owned municipal utilities. The case of Werner H. casts considerable doubt on this theory. A civil court would probably have concluded the proceedings long ago – in contrast to the lengthy arbitration proceedings, but not without costs.
(tig)
