Electricity bill: a retiree must pay 4,300 euros to EDF

A staggering bill. A resident of Draguignan (Var) had a very bad surprise at the end of last year, when she received her last bill for 2021. Laure Beizan, 70, tells Var-Matin that she fell from a height when she saw the amount displayed on paper: 4,326 euros. Impossible for this retiree who lives alone in a 50m² apartment and who has never had to pay such a sum to EDF. In 2020, she had paid 748 euros a year for her use of electricity. How to explain this new invoice?

Thinking of an error, the septuagenarian contacted EDF, which carried out an initial investigation, without result. She is therefore obliged to pay her bill, which she absolutely refuses. The situation remains unresolved, until the supplier reduces its electrical power to 1,000 watts, because it has not honored its debts. Laure Beizan contacts them again and a second investigation is opened: “I was told that a malfunction of the meter was possible”, she recalls to the local daily, but “they found nothing”.

Absent from her home between March and September, the retiree has only just returned home and her daily life has changed a lot: the low electrical power authorized for her home does not allow her to run a machine, nor to use her oven or her kettle. “The worst part of all this is that no one warned me of anything, neither by email nor by phone …”, she adds to Var-Matin. Laure Beizan contacted a social worker, who advised her to change provider. It’s done and the septuagenarian has regained normal power, but now pays a little more each month.

Asked by the daily, EDF confirms that the bill is due: “For the winter of 2021/2022, we noted consumption at 350 euros per month, when in summer, we are never below 60 euros. C “is too much. His bill should be at least half as much. To explain such overconsumption, we assume that this accommodation must be poorly insulated or that the heating is faulty”.

For her part, the retiree does not believe in these hypotheses, because she does not heat “almost not” and her apartment is equipped with double glazing: “Perhaps there was a malfunction of the Linky meter… Maybe also that the meter read was not mine but that of the old restaurant located on the ground floor of my home, which has since gone bankrupt…”, she concludes with the newspaper.