Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Eon takes on new customers again
Consumer advocates are investigating the lawsuit over CO2 prices
Eon is putting its business with new customers on hold due to skyrocketing gas prices. Now they are up and running again – however, customers must expect higher costs. Meanwhile, the consumer advice center is examining a lawsuit against the CO2 pricing of gas providers.
After a one-week break, the energy supplier Eon is again offering gas supply contracts for new customers across Germany – albeit at higher prices than just a few weeks ago. “Like many other providers, we cannot escape the current market conditions when it comes to our pricing. An average household with an annual consumption of 18,000 kWh pays around 170 euros net per month for natural gas,” reported a company spokesman.
Eon had temporarily stopped new business with private customers last week due to the enormous rise in gas prices. Other gas suppliers such as EnBW had also scaled back their marketing activities significantly. The background: In the past few months, the wholesale prices for gas have climbed to record highs internationally. According to the comparison portal Check24, the cost of the megawatt hour of gas rose by 451 percent to EUR 44.03 within a year.
The Federation of German Consumer Organizations (vzbv) meanwhile wants to have the passing on of the costs of CO2 pricing by gas providers to their customers in certain constellations legally checked. “We have received consumer complaints in which prices have been increased despite the existing price guarantee,” explained Sabine Lund, the speaker in the energy market observation team at vzbv.
At the same time, however, some consumers were not made aware of their special right of termination. Since January 2021, consumer advice centers have been receiving more and more complaints about increased gas prices, which the energy suppliers justify with the CO2 pricing introduced at the beginning of the year. The vzbv now wants to collect the data from affected consumers and examine a model declaratory action.
As the vzbv calculated in a survey for the “Welt am Sonntag”, a typical family household in a 120 square meter detached house in 2021 has to reckon with a rise in heating costs of more than 200 euros compared to the previous year due to rising gas prices. The bill for heating and hot water in 2020 was an average of 990 euros, in 2021 it will probably be 1260 euros. The heating bill in a 100 square meter apartment also rises from an average of 770 to 980 euros.