Our customers know how much they can SAVE by consulting on their choice of provider and monthly bill review (if you also want to know HOW MUCH keep reading our news…).
Unfortunately, however, there are still many companies seemingly inextricably linked to their own:
- “historical supplier”
- “consortium”
- “my cousin who works for this”
- “what will it take to check two numbers, I’ll do it myself.”
These companies do not understand that analyzing an electricity or gas bill is a BUSY job that requires a lot of COMPETENCE and EXPERIENCE.
Often the entrepreneurs we talk to, who are experts in their field, do not give any importance to what is written on the bill.
- Is the amount more or less in line with the history? Then it’s pay and go;
- Is the amount not in line? Then you complain and then pay and go.
Do you also recognize yourself in these two approaches?
What if instead you could PAY LESS for your bills, perhaps at the cost of registered mail?
Below I explain 4 items on the bill that TYPICALLY are ignored or not understood by the entrepreneur.
1) The Specific Tariff Charge or CTS (in the electricity bill).
The CTS is a real PENALTY that can range roughly from 100 to 1,000 €/month. It does not depend on your supplier (who sends you the bills) because it is charged by the distributor (who transports the energy from the national grid to your company).
So if you tell me “with Legolas Energia(fictitious name) I wasn’t paying it” maybe it’s only because certain amounts are included in the invoice with MONTHS or YEARS of delay.
When you pay it and how to avoid paying it
You pay it when you have a power delivery booth that does not meet certain technical standards OR meets them but you never sent the documentation to the distributor.
In addition to BUTTING money consider that if your system is inadequate and causes a FAILURE they can ask you for DAMAGES (read the true story of one of our customershere ).
Here is an example of how you can find the penalty in your bill each month, totaling over 3,000/year!
2) REACTIVE ENERGY (in the electricity bill).
I’ll save you a lesson in electrical engineering.
Suffice it to say that reactive energy is like SCHIELD that you cannot separate from BEER but in fact do not need. Similarly, reactive energy is a component that cannot be separated from the energy you take from the grid.
Some machines also need this kind of energy to run but it does not translate into something useful. In fact, normally you consume it from the grid without paying attention to it because you are NOT paying for it.
When you pay it and how to avoid paying it
However, when you start to draw TOO MUCH (this can happen, for example, after installing a photovoltaic system!) a penalty is triggered that can amount to THOUSANDS of €/year. To stop paying you have to install or change the rephasing system, which is a machine that PRODUCES the reactive energy you need directly in your plant.
In severe cases, the distributor (whoever transports power from the national grid to your business) may require you to adjust the power factor correction under penalty of SUSPENSION of electricity supply.
3) OVER CAPACITY (in the gas bill).
When you signed the contract for gas supply, they asked you to indicate a DAILY CAPACITY, which is the maximum consumption you expect to make per day.
When you pay it and how to avoid paying it
If you do not meet this parameter and therefore CONSUME MORE (because you work more, because of weather conditions, or because you have added machines) you may be charged PENALTIES that can EXCEED €1,000/month.
To avoid incurring this penalty, one must request details of daily withdrawals from the supplier in order to assess when to request an increase in this capacity.
Look what one of our customers found in his December bill:
The same penalty was also on the January bill totaling about €3,400. With a simple request to the supplier from us, he no longer paid them!
Another customer had signed, on our advice, an addendum to the contract that increased its capacity. Despite this, the penalty charge still arrived but, thanks to our intervention, was later rectified by the supplier.
Finally, you should know that not all providers apply penalties…What does it say in the contract you signed?
4) CIVIL TAXES (in the gas bill).
TAXES are something fixed that cannot be AVOIDED, and in many cases they are. Sometimes, however, even in this item there are errors hidden.
When you pay it and how to avoid paying it
If when you signed the contract you did not indicate correctly the use you will make of the gas, or due to a mistake by the supplier, you may find yourself paying civil instead of industrial taxes.
In this case the cost INCREASES significantly. Above I gave you an excerpt of a bill of one of our clients who without our advice on bills would have continued to pay about 6,500€/month MORE or 78,000€/year!
Do you think it is rare to encounter these penalties?
With two decades of experience in bill counseling, we can tell you that at least 80 percent of the business owners who come to us find out that they are paying one (or all in the worst cases) of the penalties I told you about. Not to mention billing errors! Having a monthly bill monitoring service allows for greater control and speed in identifying and then resolving problems.
How about you? Do you just pay the bills that come in, or have you made a conscious choice by having a consultant check your bills?
If you have concerns about your bill or want to know if the contract you signed is penalizing you CONTACT US NOW! You may actually find that you are paying penalties unnecessarily!
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