Monthly payments, pushed by energy suppliers, are favored by 3 out of 4 customers at EDF, Engie or TotalEnergies. However, at the time of regularization, unpleasant surprises can weigh down the budget, such as reassessments of monthly payments in the depths of winter. Pitfalls that can be avoided.
Used by the tax service and by energy suppliers in particular, monthly payments promise a major advantage: a spread of your bills over the entire year and, therefore, a budget that is easier to manage, free of charge and without worrying about the calendar. . Automatic debit simplifies your task and, once defined, the day your bank account is debited no longer changes.
How does it work? Thanks to the deployment of Linky (electricity) and Gazpar (gas) smart meters, energy suppliers are encouraging their customers to pay their bills monthly. Today, three out of four customers have been convinced by this operating method. If we take the example of EDF, which has the largest portfolio thanks in particular to the electricity regulation tariff (TRV), the company achieves in the first year an estimate of the consumption of your home based on the number of inhabitants and the details of the devices used.
A monthly payment is then defined for 11 months in a schedule. The 12th, you receive a regularization invoice: you must either pay the missing amount, or EDF will reimburse you if you have paid too much. This amount is calculated according to your actual consumption, provided via Linky by Enedis, the network manager. This annual consumption will be used to establish the schedule for the following year.
Except for the first year, you can modify your EDF monthly payment from your customer area. The historic supplier reminds on its website that the modulation can be carried out once a year, by going directly to your Customer area in the My Invoices > View and manage the schedule > Modify the schedule section.
Be careful the monthly payment is too low
But there you go, monthly payments also have their share of surprises and pitfalls. A low monthly payment can be very attractive at first glance. This is particularly how telephone canvassers operate, recalls the energy mediator. They use the amount of the current invoice to adjust their offer without specifying that the difference will very often be invoiced during the annual regularization.
Faced with this annual regularization, the amount of which can soar during periods of instability on the markets such as the end of 2021, Engie offers to adjust the amount of your monthly payments once a year. EDF, for its part, announces the monthly payment without surprise.
If the amount of your monthly payment is greater than 40 euros, they are checked to remain adapted to your consumption. In the event of a deviation of approximately 10%, an alert is sent by email between the 3rd and 9th month of your schedule. You are then free to validate the recommendation, or to personalize the amount, but if you do nothing, the recommendation will be applied for avoid you having to pay too large a regularization bill.
Along the same lines, TotalEnergies has put in place a re-monthly payment proposal as soon as the regularization bill risks exceeding the equivalent of two monthly payments, explains the supplier 60Million consumers.
House statements and bimonthly bills
Monthly payments can be stopped at any time for another billing system. If you prefer to pay in real money, you can receive a bimonthly invoice, every 2 months therefore, which is calculated from a consumption reading. If you do not have a smart meter, you will receive out of the 6 annual invoices, 2 invoices whose amount is calculated based on a consumption reading carried out yourself and 4 invoices calculated based on consumption estimates.
Samuel AUFFRAY
After studying political science in Paris 2 and journalism at the CFJ, Samuel Auffray worked for L’Obs in the field of… Read more
MoneyVox / SA / November 2023