Two hiked PPC bills in 12 days

Electricity providers are now sending the bills containing the property hike at machine-gun pace. They are even charging whatever and whenever they want, provided they are timely in mailing the paper that invites the citizen to pay.

But they are making unprecedented mistakes too, as in the case revealed today by protothema.gr., where instead of a taxpayer being able to pay the hike in 2 bi-monthly installments, he has received two consecutive bills that he must pay within the month.

In the first bill of 625 euros that a citizen received ten days ago from the PPC, he had a deadline for December 16. The bill includes the first of the 2 installments for the 972-euro hike which he must pay. It also has a 486-euro EETIDE tax, 45 euros in municipal taxes and 86 for the electricity value of two months.

But the postman rings twice for the same account because a few days later the customer received a new bill for the same property, the same square meters, the same consumption period (21/9-18/11). But it is not the same bill as the former one. It is a discharge ("final" as it indicates) and has a return value of electricity of 67

euros. It does not have any municipal taxes. But it has the second of the 2 installments of a special fee for electrified spaces, an additional 486 euros. And a deadline for the bill to be paid by 28/12/2011…

But the highlight of the story is that instead of asking the taxpayer for less, it requests almost double the amount of the first bill. It charges twice the first installment that they believe is outstanding, though it expires on December 16, which is yet to come! It is asking him to immediately pay 1.043 euros and in small print warns him not to pay the 625 if he has already done so, which certainly he should not have done…

But even if he did pay the 625 euros on 16/12 and the additional 1.043 on 28/12, he might have had to wait 4 months instead of 2 for a refund, as essentially he would have already paid for the fifth 2-month period, but also for the final bill of the year…