Pay your utility bills, the German way

This article is copied from the Welcome to Bavaria edition of The Bavarian News

and written by Jess Hofberger.

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Think fast. How much extra pay are you receiving to cover your utilities while living in private rental housing here in Germany? Time's up. If you are a single Soldier, receiving overseas housing allowance at the "without dependent" rate the answer is 302 Euro per month and a Soldier receiving overseas housing allowance at the "with dependent" rate the answer is 604 Euro per month. Whoa! That's a lot of money.

 

It's a lot of money even though German utilities are much more expensive than back home. So why are some Soldiers having to come up with hundreds (or even thousands) of Euros at the end of their tours to cover "surprise" utility bills? The answer is because some of us are not "reconciling" our utility bills, the German way.

 

If you live in private rental housing you must make yourself aware of how your utilities are getting billed and paid. "Utilities" include: cold water, sewage, trash, chimney sweeping, heating fuel, insurance and electricity. Get a copy of your lease and read it. You can probably scratch some of those items off your list of things you need to pay yourself because they are included in your rent.

 

In Germany, unlike in the United States, utility companies only read the meter once per year. Then they simply take that number and divide by 12 to calculate an "estimated" monthly bill. Since each bill will be the same, they don't send it every month—you are expected to just pay it.

 

At the end of the year, you and the company square-up through a process called "reconciliation." Upon moving into a new home, the monthly estimate is determined either by an amount you give the utility company or the usage of the occupant before you. That can make your first year in a new house a little scary.

 

Consider this example. Let's say that a very frugal single person lived in your apartment before you. His electricity cost about 50 Euro a month. After you move in, if you don't tell the utility company that you are a family of six, you are going to get a monthly bill for the same 50 Euro a month your predecessor paid, even though you are using a lot more electricity. Then, one day you will get a "surprise" bill for all this "extra" electricity you used. This is the reconciliation. If your family of six used twice as much electricity as the single person, you might owe 50 Euro X 12 months = 600 Euros. Ouch.

 

It gets worse before it gets better. Many utility companies don't send over a "meter reader" even once a year. Instead, they mail a card to your German address and ask you to read the meter yourself and mail it back in. If you don't return that card, the utility company just keeps sending the same bill month after month until you get ready to move or PCS—then the housing office does a final meter reading and obtains the final bill.

 

This final bill accurately measures all the electricity (or other utility) you've ever used at that location. If we go back to our example family of six and imagine that they never reconciled their electricity bill for an entire three-year tour, we can see that in order to "clear housing" they will need to pay the electric company for 600 Euro worth of extra electricity per year for three years (600 X 3 = 1800). Triple ouch…

 

To end on a happy note, let me point out that it works the other way too. If you use less of a utility than estimated, the utility company pays you back.

 

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We live in government leased housing, so from what we gather from our neighbors, this doesn't apply to us. But it is interesting to note, again, the differences between life in Germany and life in the US.