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The Positivity Thread aka "Today was a great day because....."

I changed my electricity provider, and received the final invoice from the old one. Way less consumption than predicted, and as a result they paid me back about €180 for the last year (in Germany we usually pay a monthly amount based on a prediction of our consumption, and once a year the difference to the real amount will be charged or paid back).

Also, I entered the same prediction into the contract with my new provider, so I can expect to get a similar treatment next year. :)
 
DanRoM said:
so I can expect to get a similar treatment next year. :)
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Not to dampen your spirits too much, but that just means you’re effectively giving them an interest-free loan 😐
… that shouldn’t be in here, right? Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.
 
Thing I don’t get is the lack of actual meter measurement. Even as a child 20 some years ago I saw meter readers walking around neighborhoods either reading exactly or beep boop with a remote communicator. Like… why guess and then do the extra work on the end?
 
The walking around collecting readings thing happens/ed once a year, at most, because people are expensive. Most grid operators actually have you tell them the reading either via email, online portal or postcard. No beep boop because Germans especially are afraid of … everything. The beep boop is coming, though, after everybody dragged their feet as much as they could. Slowly. For some people. Hence the making an ass of u & me (assume-ing).
 
eizbaer said:
Not to dampen your spirits too much, but that just means you’re effectively giving them an interest-free loan 😐
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I know that of course, but at the sums we talk about here, the lost interest is negligible.
And to be honest, I have no clue why my consumption has gone down so much. I still do 80% work from home and my usage pattern hasn't really changed.
 
DanRoM said:
I know that of course, but at the sums we talk about here, the lost interest is negligible.
And to be honest, I have no clue why my consumption has gone down so much. I still do 80% work from home and my usage pattern hasn't really changed.
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New appliances?
 
I think I would have noticed buying those. :D

I dialed down my fairly old fridge though, after de-icing it last winter. That might be it.
 
DanRoM said:
I think I would have noticed buying those. :D

I dialed down my fairly old fridge though, after de-icing it last winter. That might be it.
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180€/a in electricity for just a fridge… that thing would have to be huge and ancient to be able to save that 😜 must be an bit more to it than that, I hope (otherwise: new fridge asap).
bit strange then, and yeah you’re right ofc, not a whole lot of lost interest.
 
Unteresting discussion about electricity prices because I've had a similar experience a while back.
Electricity company upped my "predicted" monthly downpayment from 180 to 330€ because of "reasons". I was of course sceptical of these reasons, thinking they may be "lets just ask for more money and if it's too much, we'll pay it back at the end", because it works like that here (free loan yeah). As I did not use any more electricity than normal AND my tariff had gone DOWN, I smelled a rat...
FWIW I use about 900- 1000 kWh a month, of which 600ish goes to the car...

After talking to several people I found out that, even though I, like a nerd, fill out my online thingy every month, they ignore those and only go by the 1 "official" measurement which is taken once a year.
This was taken at a time when my car was kaputt, and hence it was a month with MUCH less use than normal, hence lower price.
I have no idea why they would do it like this, as all my data I've entered into their system is correct?
 
NooDle said:
I have no idea why they would do it like this, as all my data I've entered into their system is correct?
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stupid customer can't be trusted, must be lying.

any time my reading that I enter into the system deviates from their prediction (which official yearly consumption scaled according to time passed since last reading) too much (like more than 20% or so), it will get refused and I have to enter a reason explaining the deviation - which is ridiculous, the explanation is always just "THATS WHAT THE METER SHOWS, DUMBASS!". thus, I simply no longer put in any manual readings myself. we moved in and started to charge the car, consumption up, got a heatpump in march, consumption up, ditched the second electricity meter there was because this used to be a 2 family home (thus one meter had zero consumption until they managed to collect it HALF A YEAR LATER ffs), then got solar (consumption wayyyy down) ... that meant every time they wanted an arbitrary reason to accept my reading. I've already talked to them (they're colleagues after all) and how that system basically punishes people with this bullshit for actually providing better data for us... but as usual, there isn't any willingness to change things :|
 
eizbaer said:
any time my reading that I enter into the system deviates from their prediction (which official yearly consumption scaled according to time passed since last reading) too much (like more than 20% or so), it will get refused and I have to enter a reason explaining the deviation - which is ridiculous, the explanation is always just "THATS WHAT THE METER SHOWS, DUMBASS!".
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It's pretty much the same over here, but only when I enter the required yearly reading they need to make the final bill. They then require a picture to confirm the reading if it is x-% off from what they expected (which seems to happen almost every year in my case). In our house we have a really really old meter which is installed in a box with a plastic window, installed in a sealed box with a plastic window. It's not that hard to read the meter, but taking a picture from it is a lot harder through 3 layers of plastic...

Some time after someone from the distribution company came by 1-2years ago I got a letter that they were going to install a new digital meter. Once the technicians arrived and took one look at it, they said they weren't going to install the new meter. Because it is an old installation (up to the meter, everything behind it is modern) it uses a type of cable they aren't allowed to work on/with.
So from what they told me the distribution company is basically waiting until either I need a new meter for example because I want to install solar panels, or the point in time they really have to replace it.
Apparently because they would need to install a new cable from the street to my garage when they install a new meter and if they "force" me to get a new meter they have to pay for it, but if it's on my request then I'm the one who has to pay for that.
 
^ same. Taking the picture every year is just plain annoying, because if you use flash it's invisible, and if you don't use flash the picture is out of focus.
Apparently I was also going to get a digital meter to combat all these problems (and also, give me a chance to properly analyse and manage my electricity consumption. According to the official website I should be getting one quite soon (it says october 2021)...
 
Went to look at a couple of cars to replace the VW Caddy, ended up with 3-4 serious and more or less equal options which put me in a luxury position. Low balled the first bids knowing I had other options should they not bite and I think I got a rather nice deal out of it. The asking prices weren't that ridiculous either, if I was more in a hurry I might have bought one of them for asking price.
 
Accepted a job offer yay! Now to negotiate leaving my current job earlier...
 
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