Although this winter is not being especially harsh in terms of temperatures, something that has caused the use of heating to be less intense than on other occasions, many users are being affected by the rise in the price of suppliesspecifically gas.
People who use gas at home to run the heating, kitchen fires or domestic hot water and who are seeing it as coinciding with the start of the new year, The gas energy bill has multiplied alarmingly. It is enough to take a walk through the networks to see that invoices of almost 1,000 euros are a reality.
500% increments
A bill of more than 800 euros can unbalance the accounts of any user and in fact, many speak of a scare and a heart attack when checking the gas bill at the beginning of 2023. The January slope arrives and to top it off, an invoice that has been multiplied by five in a single month.
And as usually happens in these cases, social networks have been the showcase in which many users have complained about a stratospheric gas bill. A rise from which no marketer is spared, although it is the largest (Iberdrola, Endesa, Naturgy, EDP, Repsol…), which monopolize many of the complaints
Hello @iberdrola Does this seem normal to you? €820.8 of GAS BILL €0.309/kWh that rises to 0.33 from 2023. Months adjusting all expenses and you come out with this surprise. Of course, 3,104 million euros (and rising) of profit, at our expense. pic.twitter.com/xB9sdrLBdy
—Jose Bisbal (@Elessarche) January 23, 2023
Customers who complain with protests in which they denounce the unexpected increase in their gas bill, a price change that has caught them by surprise. No one has contacted them notifying them of a change in the price of the rate they had been paying.
So my gas bill is like this… a family of 3 plus one on the way with her mom on leave for a high-risk pregnancy and charging shit, that’s how they want us, starving to death, every time the prices of everything, please where are we going to take with all this?? pic.twitter.com/iEtcCG0Tyr
— Anamaria Calderon (@snamaria2705) January 26, 2023
From the outset, it must be taken into account that in the market in Spain we can find rates with very different conditions and prices: those of the free market and the one known as the Last Resort Rate or TUR. And a good part of the homes are still on the free market.
Despite the advantages of the TUR rate or Last Resort Rate, which has its price limited by law, a large number of households remain on the free market. As of July 2022 and according to the CNMC, more than 6.3 million of the free market in front of 1.54 million households who bet on the TUR.
The first micro heart attack of the day is when the gas bill arrives. The second, that you read that you have to pay more than €600… Now is when everyone knew that TUR rates existed and you live in a parallel world at home ✌🏻
— Lou (@LouRG23) February 3, 2023
And this is where the problem lies. If in your case you are in the free market and you signed the contract more than a year ago, you will surely have a very adjusted gas price that will be advantageous for you. The problem is that After the year of the contract, it is renewed automatically and the marketer is in charge of notifying you of the new conditions, something that many users complain about that has not happened.
I just received the gas bill for Nov-Dec 2022: the kWh price has increased by 300% compared to 2021, I’m FLIPING. This is #communismeach day reminds me more of Lenin’s 1917 massacre of his own people. pic.twitter.com/Cx992hWlTq
— Jose Antonio 🟥⬛🟥 (@joseansolo) January 24, 2023
In this case, you must be attentive to the renewal of the contract, since when the time comes You must check the price at which your supplier will offer you the gas and in that case assess whether it is interesting to switch to the TUR rate.
The important thing is the conditions, and here we can find some cases in which they change at the most inopportune moment. This is the case of an acquaintance in which the conditions changed just after the signing of the contract. The result is an invoice 433 euros for a consumption of domestic hot water and four hours a day of heating. In the words of the affected person, “what they recommended is that every two months I go to an Endesa office to review the contract I have”.
Regarding the TUR rate, 3 different ones are offered depending on consumption of the user. It is a rate that is reviewed every three months (January, April, July and October) and does not have permanence, so that you can return to the free market at any time:
- TUR.1: for consumption less than or equal to 5,000 kWh/year.
- TUR.2: for consumption greater than 5,000 kWh/year and less than or equal to 15,000 kWh/year.
- TUR.3: for consumption greater than 15,000 kWh/year and less than or equal to 50,000 kWh/year.
Faced with this, we find the free market rates, among which we find proposals of very diverse types. In the free market, it is the marketing companies that present offers in the form of fixed prices, flat rates, by the hour… and in these we do not meet the limits set by the regulators.
We live in a time when you have to pay close attention to the prices of the rates within the free market, which by not having a cap, can lead to an unpleasant surprise when receiving our electricity bill. A lot of attention to the small print and the valuation to make use of any of the variables within the TUR rates offered by the market.
Via | The Spanish