Man receives a district heating bill for 1.6 million euros - and freaks out
Created: 11/25/2022, 5:00 p.m
By: Franziska Kaindl
A man in Norderstedt in Schleswig-Holstein receives a letter from the municipal utility: he is to pay 1.6 million euros for district heating.
In a video he freaks out.
Due to the energy crisis, many consumers expect to have to dig deep into their pockets for heating this winter.
With a bill of 1.6 million euros, most people would still have their hearts sinking.
This is exactly what happened to a man from Norderstedt in Schleswig-Holstein – in a YouTube video he vents his anger about it.
Man should pay 1.6 million euros for district heating
"Do you have one on the clarinet, or what?" Timo Sievert scolds in his video.
According to Stadtwerke Norderstedt's "information letter on possible savings potential", he should pay 1,647,620.33 euros for district heating for an estimated annual consumption of 9,840,000 kilowatt hours.
With only a "small loss of thermal comfort" he could save around 590,400 kilowatt hours of energy or 98,000 euros.
It is clear to him that this can only be a mistake: the firefighter has had a house with seven rooms and 150 square meters in Norderstedt near Hamburg for two months.
"I don't want to heat the whole district here," he says.
However, he wonders why such letters are sent out at all.
Some people would take them at face value: "If a 90-year-old grandma gets it, then she'll fall dead off the sofa," says Sievert indignantly.
"Doesn't anyone check the mail you send out?" The firefighter rumbled over the letter in his video for more than seven minutes.
His lecture has already been called more than 72,000 times.
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Stadtwerke: System error caused incorrect district heating bill
Stadtwerke Norderstedt confirmed the incident to the Hamburger Morgenpost
online portal
.
A system error is to blame for the wrong letter, said spokesman Oliver Weiß.
Since Sievert has just moved in, the annual consumption of the previous resident was used as the basis for the consumption estimate.
The district heating meters of the municipal utility would therefore always measure in megawatt hours, while the consumer would receive the figures in kilowatt hours.
There was a conversion error in the system that increased the total by a factor of 1,000.
