Seldomseenkid

I am sorry but I hate Italian bureaucracy with a vengeance. We are being billed for water because they assume that there are three people in the house when in fact there are only two. I have managed to get myself registered on line with ACEA but I cannot find how to tell them there are only two when we are here, which is less than six months anyway. Can anyone help with this? I would phone but dealing with officialdom over the phone I have found to be the most difficult and so I would like to avoid it if I can. Many thanks in advance.

heritagestanley

Can't you just send them a PEC email? My understanding is that PEC ensures proof of receipt

Serrano

The fly in the ointment is that both sender and receiver have to have PEC accounts for a communication to have legal value. The water company should must have one (but sometimes it may be difficult to find it). However, the sender (the OP) may well be using a UK provider for his email, in which case PEC is simply not available. We tend to forget that there are only 3 or 4 countries in the world who support PEC, and the UK is most definitely not among them ...

Seldomseenkid

Hi and thanks
With much trepidation I registered on the ACEA website yesterday and put in a reading for useage. Feeling brave I went in today and found out how to change the number of people in the household on the site. A WIN but no because it is necessary to put in a meter reading to effect this change and when I do it tells me it is not possible to put in more than one reading per month. GRRRRR Anyway now I know and can do it next month.

Johnbologna63

Sorry am I missing something here? Why would they base your water bills on the amount of people in the house? Surely bills are based on the amount of water consumed!

Listen Very Carefully

When I lived in Italy we had to declare how many people lived in the house to Umbra Aquae.We then got an estimated bill every two months based on the assumed usage for two and once a year the meter was actually read and the bill adjusted accordingly At that time there was no website to report your actual reading and indeed when we first moved there UA did not even have the facility to set up a direct debit meaning that to pay every bill meant a trip to the post office or a trip to UA offices to queue up for hours so being able to sort things out on line is sheer luxury !!!!

37100

Up here in my part of Veneto. We have electric water meters for remote reading.

philat98

After living here for 10 years I have given up asking any why questions.

Serrano

Yes, you are missing something. Quite simply (and from an environmental point of view, sensibly) the cost of a unit of any utility (gas, electric, water) goes up the more you use. What happens in the case of water is that the thresholds of the different bands go up according to the number of people in the household (because water consumption is fairly closely related to the number of people, thus the threshold for 'excessive' use goes up according to the number of people in the household). The same doesn't apply to gas or electric, on the basis that consumption (the major part being heating, cooking, lighting) doesn't vary so much with the size of the household.

Now of course they should really do something about the Tasse Rifiuti - which are also directly related to the number of people - but instead we are stuck with the old system of taxing by the size (sq.m.) of the property. Oh well, you can but dream ...