Electricity price: After wave of bankruptcies – provider is turning the screw on costs
Created: 01/25/2022, 21:05
By: Fabian Raddatz
EWE supplies 1.5 million customers with electricity and gas, primarily in Bremen and Lower Saxony.
© Mohssen Assanimoghaddam/dpa
In Lower Saxony alone, more than 10,000 people have lost their electricity provider because it went bankrupt.
Electricity supplier EWE is now also announcing price increases.
Hanover/Bremen – Who is going to pay for that?
Electricity and energy prices are at an all-time high.
The comparison portal “Verivox” has now announced that there has been an increase like there has never been before and calculates: If a family of three paid an average of 1171 euros for 4000 kilowatt hours (kWh) in annual consumption in January 2021, a year later it is already 1626 euros for the same amount.
An increase of almost 40 percent, an electricity price swatter.
Utilities: | EWE |
CEO: | Stefan Dohler (April 1, 2018–) |
Headquarters: | Oldenburg |
Founding: | 1943 |
An unprecedented price dynamic within a year, writes "Verivox".
And the horror reports for energy consumers don't stop: According to their own statements, cheap providers such as Stromio and gas.de went bankrupt in the course of the electricity price explosion.
From one day to the next, thousands of customers were without an electricity supplier.
After Stromio and Co. went bankrupt: Suddenly at EWE
In Lower Saxony alone, more than 10,000 people suddenly found themselves without an energy supplier.
Many found accommodation with other providers, public utilities jumped in as basic suppliers to catch the customers.
Stromio and gas.de customers received a letter after the low-cost electricity providers went bankrupt, telling them that they were now with EWE.
The energy group based in Oldenburg spoke of a smooth transition, the terminated electricity and gas customers could be managed without additional effort.
But apparently EWE had not counted on the sheer number of cheated Stromio and gas.de customers.
70,000 new customers: EWE raises electricity prices
The news portal “Nord24” reports that 70,000 new customers were forced to switch to EWE as a result of the bankruptcy of cheap electricity providers.
As a result, the plan to reduce the electricity price by more than one cent per kilowatt hour from January 2022, as EWE announced in November 2021 according to “Nord24”, is now apparently falling through.
On the contrary: the price of electricity should rise.
Due to the tens of thousands of new customers, the energy supplier has to buy electricity and gas on the expensive market.
A price increase is inevitable.
It is not yet clear when this will happen, but it is likely to be in the first half of the year, as EWE spokesman Dietmar Bücker confirmed to kreiszeitung.de.
Electricity price: EWE price increase only for basic supply customers
EWE cannot increase electricity prices until April at the earliest, as the notice period is six weeks.
It should be about an increase of more than just one or two percent.
The electricity price increase would only affect basic supply customers, according to Bücker.
These accounted for less than a third at EWE.
Customers with price guarantee contracts should be able to keep their conditions until the end of the contract.
It was only at the beginning of the year that EWE increased the prices for basic services – from 6.84 cents per kilowatt hour to 7.75 cents in the energy price (“natural gas comfort” tariff).
For many other providers, the increase was far more severe.
Many households in Lower Saxony received announcements from their electricity providers about additional costs of up to 2000 euros.
Consumer advocate: Ex-Stromio customers are entitled to compensation
By the way: Christina Wallraf, energy expert at the NRW consumer advice center, has a valuable tip for cheated Stromio customers.
If you now have to buy your electricity from a substitute supplier at a higher price, you can claim damages from Stromio.
The consumer advice centers have provided sample letters on their websites.
Stromio has failed and scammed its customers.
Kerstin Andreae, General Manager of the Federal Association of Energy and Water Management (BDEW)
Christina Wallraf described Stromio in the ARD program "Hart aber fair" as the black sheep among the electricity providers that you absolutely have to avoid.
She advised existing customers of the company to cancel payments and revoke direct debits.
Kerstin Andreae, General Manager of the Federal Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW) agreed: Since the contracts were terminated at short notice for economic reasons and there was no insolvency, Stromio would have "abandoned and cheated" its customers.
After Stromio and Co. went bankrupt: the federal government wants to better protect electricity customers in the future
The federal government now wants to put a stop to short-term terminations of electricity and gas contracts by cheap suppliers and price jumps with a legal reform.
"We must not leave consumers out in the rain again," said Oliver Krischer (Greens), Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Economics, the German Press Agency in Berlin.
"It was and is a great burden for many people and a great shock to suddenly find a cancellation from the gas or electricity provider in the mailbox."
Specifically, Krischer announced that there should be uniform tariffs in the basic service in the future, so that new customers do not pay twice or three times as much as existing customers.
"Split basic service tariffs are ultimately just an unnecessary employment program for courts, which we want to avoid." Split tariffs mean a split for new and existing customers.
In addition, the termination of gas or electricity deliveries should in future have to be announced several months in advance so that consumers can look for a new supplier in peace, says Krischer.
(With dpa material)
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