Image of an electricity bill.
There are about 150,000 consumers whose electricity company has made them overpay on their bill, without notifying them, with the new hourly rate. This was detailed this Friday by the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC). At a time when electricity prices in the wholesale market are skyrocketing, the agency had reported last Wednesday that some marketers had raised the cost of energy in the receipt after the entry into force of the new hourly rate , which began to be applied on June 1. “In specific cases”, the billing was 30% higher than that which would have corresponded, said Competencia.
More information
The agency has not made public the names of the companies that have overcharged their clients, although it indicates that the process of their supervision is still open. The CNMC has analyzed the information of 25 trading companies that represent a market share of 91% of the total domestic supply points in the free market. In this first phase, it has been detected that 1.4% of the supervised contracts, some 240,000, have been subject to an increase in the price of energy.
Of these, 90,000 have received a specific communication from their marketers. That is to say: they were notified that the energy term was going to be increased, in addition to the changes in the tolls related to the entry into force of the new tariff for sections, indicating that there was the possibility of terminating the contract without penalty. But in the rest of the cases (150,000 contracts) the information has not been transparent, according to the CNMC, which has asked the companies to correctly re-invoice consumers.
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Endesa, Iberdrola and Naturgy have assured this Friday that they have followed the methodology established by the CNMC to apply the new tariff system by tranches, and that they have not been contacted by the supervisor to correct errors. Competition, on the other hand, has reported that some of the marketers that inflated the invoice without correctly communicating it to their customers are already carrying out the regularizations. In addition, remember that a second analysis is being carried out with the following 19 marketers with the largest share, so that 95% of the low voltage free market supplies are supervised.
Sanctions
At the moment, the CNMC has not applied any sanction to the marketers that have increased prices without duly notifying consumers. The agency clarifies that it is monitoring the regularizations and, at the same time, verifying the specific performance of the companies in question to determine if it is an irregularity in the process of correction or an infringement. If the latter is involved, the corresponding files will be initiated.
In this sense, the CNMC clarifies that non-compliance can not yet be concluded, without processing a sanctioning procedure. The preliminary reports that have been carried out contain indications and elements that could justify the opening of a sanctioning process, but it is not possible to conclude on the commission of an offense without first processing a procedure that includes the possibility of allegation and evidence by the administered.