Lorna at Vicenza

Sorry this has happened to you Bricwood but (don't want to sound offensive here) let it be a lesson learned.

Unfortunately in Italy in most things and especially bills ..... you are guilty until you can prove you have paid ............ keep all paid receipts filed for at least a few years.

bricwood

I keep all receipts normally don't know what happened this time my local post office has to be seen to be believed, when my girlfreind was here we went to the post office to try to tax my car and it was such uproar even she gave up and said she would do it for me when she got home, if someone went in my local post office with a donkey on the end of a piece of rope or a live chicken under there arm nobody would be surprised , the only thing about my electric bill I think maybe it happened to others too as there was a near riot going on today and people shouting about the electric, there are just not enough post office down here , I was lucky because until recently my bills were 400 to 500 euro and I and my girlfriend and I think I was paying the woman who formally owned my houses bill as well as my one, I have not set up standing orders as yet as my bank is monte de paschi and there charges seem scandalous to me when I sent money over there was a long line of charges and the list of charges is incomprehensible to me so maybe I will get a post office account or something

Lorna at Vicenza

Bricwood - until you find a tutor or somebody to teach you day to day Italian ... if anything important crops up and you feel you just don't have the Italian - tell me and I'll write it down for you.

By the way - I know plenty Italians have turned to the Post Office accounts to avoid the Italian bank monthly charges. If I didn't have a mortgage with an Italian bank it might be the way to go.

bricwood

thanks a lot I thought everything was finally running ok until this cropped up, Margaret who is over the road told her daughter about enel and she wanted to go to the post office with me to sort it out but without a receipt its pointless, I usually scan everything but I had a lot going on at the time, as you say its a lesson learned , I still cant see how this can happen the woman in the post office puts my bill in a machine and it reads the bill and she types in the money I think and thats it, I have a feeling its enels fault , I said to my girlfriend only in Italy could you pay a bill in a post office and the money does not get there, I discovered it is one euro as someone said as I paid easily today with the right money, I always say to people if only I could get my electric in a bombala you cannot beat a bombola 25 euro and gas for months , I think enel is the absolute pits but as I said there was something going on in the post office with lots of shouting today and maybe I am not the only one it was turning ugly in there today

Lorna at Vicenza

Maybe everybody was blaming the post office for a fault at Enel - or maybe it really was the fault of the post office.

One thing I do know for sure ............ it's never anybody's fault here and nobody ever owns up. That's why the onus is on you to always prove your innocence.

Most payments are done electronically these days so check your bills in the future to see if (miraculously) you've been given a rebate. This could take anything from 6 months to 6 years.


P.S. Can I be so cheeky as to ask if you're a pensioner?

bricwood

well it depends how you define a pensioner I get two private pensions that I paid in myself as I was always self employed but I am not 65 for 3 more years

ononno

Ciao Bricwood, and welcome to the club. I think that in all this, you can put the blame squarely at the post office. I have two unpaid bills sat on my desk just now - Telecom and ENEL. The Telecom one is due date 10/08/2010, delivered by postman 20/08/2010. The ENEL one is due date 13/08/2010, delivered by postman 26/08/2010. Both contain a penaly charge for late payment of previous bills, caused by late delivery by the post office. Neither of these bills is now going to be paid until I receive the 'unpaid' letter from each supplier. Neither the post office, nor either of the suppliers, are interested. So nor am I. I have better things to do with my time than worry about, and chase, these stupid institutions and their inefficiencies. For personal reasons I have no intention of trusting remote payments, either.
ciao for now,
'o nonno

Lorna at Vicenza

Thanks for answering Bricwood. I did mean state pensioner and you're not yet. You're as young as my dad

bricwood

Well apparently everything is ok and I am now overpaid, my neighbour opposites daughter phoned them up and they say its because letters take so long to get here how that effects things I am not sure, at least I will not be cut off, I think its widespread as everyone was on about luce yesterday and I know that means electric down here my electrician wrote luce and drew a picture of a light bulb next to his name, I got more letters today so maybe they are backed up somewhere and got my sky bill and went back to the dreaded post office, the add one euro on the bill did not work today I had to cough up another 30 cents !!! I really don't know now, now august is over its back to being a ghost town lovely no queuing up in the shops, no loud music 10 months of peace!

angeli

Glad its sorted....nightmare.... Reading back I was horrified to see the amount of money you've been charged in the past...300 euros a time.....mine average around 60....what have you in the house that eats electricity ??? (know this last bill much better thanks to solar)

bricwood

well there several things influencing my bill I had a water pump that was running constantly till it was fixed and a water heater that eats electricity, also apparently if you own two homes here you get one bill for the two and the ID on the bill was not the one on my meter the suspicion was I was paying for this and the woman's big house in lecce I really dont know but my lawyer looked into and thought there was nothing amiss its too late now, my bills are now about 100 euro each time but I do use air conditioning a lot, it was 45 one day last week and I cant sleep if its very hot, I just looked its a chilly 25 today and windy,the biggest mistake I made as a waste of money is sky tv I have seen everything before in England and I have the movie channel and never watch it, its got to go or at least change package, another thing with my bill is there are lights everywhere outside and when I first moved in left them on all night to keep burglars away before I got alarmed up

chris120

Just to divert the thread a bit, I have thought long and hard about outside lighting viz ὰ viz burglars. I understand that conventional wisdom indicates that you should light the place up to deter unwanted visitors but I am not so convinced, especially when no-one is at home. I have come to the conclusion that darkness is better, if I was a burglar what would I prefer? A well lit garden where I could see what was left about to assist me and see what I was doing or complete darkness where I am floundering, tripping over stuff and never sure if a Doberman is watching me from the shadows? I might make an exception about movement activated flood lighting.
Back to the original thread subject I have transferred all my bills to domiciliazione bancaria, the charge is minimal, the bill is paid on the last possible day, even if you are away (no forgetting) and there is a permanent record of payment. You get the invoice a couple of weeks at least before the due date so you can check and challenge it if you think there is something wrong. By the way, bi-monthly electric bills of €300 or €400 are not unusual. It depends on how many people you have in the house (especially females – am I allowed to say that?), size of the house, water heating situation, A-C, electric ovens and your lifestyle.

Lorna at Vicenza

Females?

Do we use more electricity than men?

Pica

If I can't use my hairdryer it will be a BAD day!!!!

chris120

In my experience, yes. I live with 3 females, when we had an au pair it was 4 (wife and 2 daughters) I jokingly accuse them of being diodes. They also seem to want to heat or air condition the whole planet by leaving the windows and doors open.