Guys is this legal? (more info in comments)

15 comments
  1. My mother has the right to verhoogde tegemoetkoming status (vipo for the francophones) and with the new policies she has right to the social tariff, but she has received from mega an email that her deposit will rise from €120 to more than €310

    they give you the option to adjust it, but it doesn’t let me change it too much

    and no there is no option to not raise it as they stated if I don’t change my desired deposit they will do it automatically

    If anybody could provide some insight into what I could do like this too much for her to pay monthly

  2. Yes it is. First, you can decide to not increase your monthly pre-payments. But then you might face a hefty bill at the end. I would still keep the monthly payments as small as possible, because I can make better use of the money then them in the meantime. 😉

    Concerning the increase of the electricity prices, yes, this is also legal. We have an energy crisis right now with coal and gas skyrocketing. Mr Putin isn’t nice to Europe these days. Second, Belgium knows that it needs to replace its nuclear power plants since years. Yet, nothing is moving. The renewable capacity is built way to slow. No gas peakers are being constructed. We had this coming for a decade.

  3. Yes, it’s legal for them to propose this, but: you as the consumer have the final choice. If you can’t change the advances online enough, call them and propose another amount, and they *have* to follow.
    However, as others have said, be aware of the rising prices so don’t go too low, or there may be a significant bill at the end of the year.
    Your mom must have had a “jaarafrekening” pretty recently: calculate that in, and add some percentage to cover the rising prices. Also, be aware that your actual energy *consumption* is just a part of the bill, and that only that part should rise significantly if energy prices rise

    Edit: also: shop around! Go to creg.be and look for better deals. Changing energy suppliers is a pretty painless experience.

  4. When having “verhoogde tegemoetkoming”, it was only decided for this year (so far) that those people have the right for energy prices the same as those who have the right on “sociale tarief”. And the “sociale tarief” prices gets to be reviewed every quarter (so also rising) prices now for “sociale tarief” are for october-december. So priced can change throughout the year and have been rising.

    Now, onto Mega. Change ASAP. They are in bad papers and try to haul in cash as much as possible to survive. It wouldn’t surprise me if they go bankrupt and their customers, who have paid to much upfront, will lose what they have paid in excess.

    So tell your mom to change to another supplier.

  5. This suggestion is legal, you do not have to adapt it. You can always call the service to set it to a different amount. Online you can only adapt it for a small amount yourself.

  6. Wij zitten/zaten ook bij Mega energie.
    Onze factuur was ook met meer dan 100 euro verhoogd. Toen we die terug wouden verlagen kregen we een melding dat je niet meer dan 10% kan verlagen…

  7. I think there’s a good chance Mega is having a lot of financial problems right now and they are trying to raise money to survive. Be careful!

  8. I think you can just call the company and ask them for a diferent rate. I did the same with an energy provider of mine but I don’t remember which one it was. We took over someone’s contract, they used to pay somewhere in the €40 range and then we get a letter that the provider wanted us to pay €200. I called them and they changed it back to €50 without much trouble.

  9. If you have a fixed price contract, it’s illegal for them to change your monthly advance without your agreement. That would just amount to a free loan for them. If the company goes under, you’ll never see that dough again.

    AFAIK the only thing they can do is provide you with a detailed overview of your usage, and prove they need to adjust your advance based on that. Obviously this would only work if your consumption is ridiculously high compared to last year.

    Another valid reason is if the government decides to increase the VAT or something.

    But barring those two things, they cannot unilaterally decide to increase your advance. You can take them to court if they decide to try.

  10. Jup im a client of Luminus and i pay (voorschot) monthly and when i get the end bill after a year, they pay me the difference between the voorschot and the actuall bill back

  11. This basically is: please give us money we can use to generate interest and we pinky promise to give it back when we have to!

    Basically they screwed themselves over with their expectations and now need to swallow the bitter pill but want you to do it instead.

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