Many households in Germany are no longer able to pay their electricity bills. As a result, around half a million households are sitting in the dark.
The sharp price increases for electricity and gas is leading to serious payment problems for more and more consumers – even to dark apartments. Because of unpaid bills an estimated 600,000 households in Germany had their power cut off in 2010, said the consumer watch dog Verbraucherzentrale Nordrhein-Westfalen which is based in Düsseldorf. This estimate is based on a survey of local energy providers in Germany’s most populous state.
“Price increases of around 15 percent for electricity and gas in the past two years have made energy for many households unaffordable”, said CEO Klaus Mueller. The increasing fuel poverty is alarming. What is more, ever tighter household budgets and regularly lacking competence in keeping personal finances in check are turning claims arising from unpaid energy bills quickly into an insurmountable cost trap.
Three-quarters of the 58 companies that responded to questions from the NRW consumer group reported growing problems related to energy debt and power outages. In 2010, the surveyed utilities in North Rhine-Westphalia alone sent out three million reminders for unpaid electricity bill. They issued 340,000 blocking threats and cut off power to 62,000 customers.
According to extrapolations by consumer protection groups, power has been cut off to about 120,000 households in NRW alone and to about 600,000 households nationwide. The estimates of the energy companies are consistent with the experience of the consumer advocates. A spokeswoman from the NRW consumer watch dog added that their consumer advice increasingly focuses on the question of how to comply with payment obligations towards energy suppliers.
Translation Philipp Mueller
Coming soon to a home near you…”energy prices will necessarily skyrocket”…’nuff said.
But they are sitting in Green darkness!!! That feels good!
Linked
BHO wants the UK’s failed National Health Service and German Electric prices. Just out to help us poor folk.
The easiest way to a man’s heart is through his belly, the easiest way to his wallet is through his energy bills.
Suprised they cut so many people off, if true. In the UK, it’s much rarer, as I understand it, and done as a last resort. Debts will normally be loaded onto prepayment key/card meters and the debtors will have to service that debt in addition to their ongoing energy usage. But there’s also an uptick in the number of people who are fraudulently tampering with meters to obtain free energy.
“regularly lacking competence in keeping personal finances in check” blame the victim again – already happening in US. Utility companies are essentially unregulated – electric, water, phone . . . all have right to charge exorbitant fees, no longer allow customer to contest bogus bills of excessive nature and have carte blance to rob the people and there is no government entity to turn to for negotiation aid. Their greed is killing the people’s belief in capitalism or trust in government of any kind.
Sarum,
I pay $8 per day for electricity. $2 per day for water. $3 per day for phone/internet. $3 per day for TV. Altogether I pay $16 per day for all of these services. You call this exorbitant? I am in California where the rates are probably the highest in the country. Either you are getting really screwed by your providers or you have lost your marbles.
We 600.000 Germans are not sitting in the dark only, 10 millions are also sitting jobless in the dark side of the public! They call that we are only 3 million without work, that’s of cause not true! Officials may be mentally disturbed and physically handicapped us so that we call disappear from the unemployment statistics. This problem is much more dramatic for us Germans as the darkness. The so-called BRD lying to their population, coz BRD is not the real DEUTSCHLAND!
2010 ??? This data is 2 years old !! I dont care how many german houses had the power shutoff in 2010, of which many might have been vacant anway, I want to know how many have been shutoff in 2012, today, in February.
NOTE TO AUTHOR “EDITOR” – use data that is current and meaningful
NOTE TO COMMENTER “SCHEISTER” – writing in CAPS is likely to get you ignored
. I’m neither the author nor the translator, which if you actually read the piece you would have seen. The item is from Die Welt last week and includes the latest available data. 2010 was only completed 14 months ago and population statistics are only compiled during subsequent years.
Like most of the world, Deutschland is a nation in debt slavery run by employees of the BANK masquerading as Germans. End the debt, arrest or throw out the bankers, like they did in Iceland, and go back to work.
North Carolina not only allowed a single utility to monopolize the entire State, they were talked into automatic 7% annual rate increases so consumers could pay the costs of the merger. The funniest part will be when no one can afford the power bill in five years (2nd highest rates in the U.S. now) and property taxes have to be raised because State government rates will need to go up in proportion to the total number of rate payers disconnecting. Pretty soon deregulation will ruin N.C. the way it has other States and we will be a third world country inside the greatest country on earth. How nice.
Deregulation isn’t the problem…stupid regulation and bad politicians are what caused this. Focus on the cause not the cause celeb.
Go to the neighborhood of the bankers and start cutting their power lines. Once its repaired, cut it again. While you’re at it, chop through their water pipes, too. Let them know that it will stop as soon as they’ve returned every pfennig of your money, with interest. In the meantime, attach a cheap solar panel to a few car batteries wired into an AC-DC power converter.
Hey Amicusbriefs,
Maybe we should just chop everyone up and eat them too. What a complete idiot you are. Do you troll around making stupid comments everyday. Get a life you low life.
Arrest all the green pollies! Give them a “fair’ trial & hang them!
Seems a little extreme, don’t you think?
To the editor.
I advocate a more human termination for the genocide perpetrators which are killing people slowly by starvation, darkness & cold!
Uh-huh, give them a fair trial and hang them…
How about we undo the damage they’ve wrought and show them the errors of their ways? Better to have them working with us than have to dispose of all those bodies, no?
people just have to be smart enough to know they can create their own energy…its not rocket science…read, learn and dont be dependant on other people to give you everything. they take away electricity so you die???? omg..people.
Jct: Har har har har. Freezing their asses off because they ran out of poker chips and don’t know where to get more!
I realize you all are not the source of the information, DieWelt is, but I find this stand alone data useless.
What were the shut off numbers in 2005 and/or 2000? Need to have some comparison years. Maybe it is just the recession. What are the shut-off figures (as a percentage of the population) for France, Netherlands, Belgium?
Hemminger the arch-Zionist reply troll is paid handsomely for his disinformation. Describe how protest signs and groveling at the feet of your blood enemy defeats them. Describe for us all the ‘balanced’ playing field between defenders of freedom and purveyors of human suffering. Notice the troll makes the leap from nonviolent disruption of services to death by dismemberment and cannibalism. This troll is salivating for Purim.