The craftsman found himself with an invoice published at 109,000 euros, for 20 days of consumption. The company has admitted that it was wrong.
Par LePoint.fr
“/>
© MARTIN BERTRAND / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP
Published on
Subscriber-only audio playback
Udoes not invoice 108,933 euros, for 20 days of consumption. According to Le Figaro, an Alsatian baker based in Bollwiller, a few kilometers northwest of Mulhouse, had the very unpleasant surprise of receiving an exorbitant bill from his electricity supplier EDF. Faced with such an amount, the craftsman Éric Claudel had no choice but to display the receipt “to inform customers in case [il] dev[rait] close, ”he testifies to our colleagues. The invoice, published for only 20 days of consumption, was photographed by one of the baker’s customers before ending up on social networks and creating a buzz.
Installed for nearly a decade in the village of 3,800 inhabitants, the baker was interested in the detail of the invoice. And he was quite right. According to the electricity supply company, Éric Claudel would have consumed a whopping 639,000 kWh in just under three weeks. For comparison, he ensures that this exceeds the amount of electricity consumed by the town hall to fulfill its mission of lighting the streets and its buildings. The opportunity for the artisan baker to denounce the “absurdity” of such an invoice.
READ ALSOThe electricity bill of the Louvre museum explodes
EDF recognizes a “counting error”
Fortunately, “no deduction” took place on the accounts of the Alsatian professional. Indeed, EDF recognized the existence of a “counting error”. A decision taken not without difficulty. Indeed, the baker assured our colleagues that he “had to make three complaints” to obtain the arrival of a technician. According to the company, after this big hiccup, another corrective invoice was sent to the professional customer, at the regulated rate. Despite this response, Éric Claudel awaits a precise explanation of this incident.
In recent months, artisan bakers have been worried about rising energy prices, especially as these come in the midst of soaring raw material prices. From 1is February, prices must increase by 15%. At the same time, professionals who signed new contracts in the fall of 2022 had to accept prices that often broke the ceiling. Faced with this situation, the Ministry of the Economy has set up several “shock absorbers”. One of them allows bakers to renegotiate their contract, if it was signed during the second half of 2022. Be that as it may, the Alsatian baker claims to have taken up energy sobriety, the new mantra of the government. “Before, I left the oven until noon, now I turn it off around 8 or 9 am,” he assured our colleagues.