Energy suppliers Eneco and Vattenfall saw last year that more and more customers could not pay the bill. At Eneco there was an increase of about 10 percent, while Vattenfall saw an increase of 20 to 30 percent. The cause of the problems is that more and more people are faced with high energy bills.
This was mainly because Russia supplied less and less gas to Western Europe, causing the price to rise. Because gas is regularly used to generate electricity, electricity also cost more and more. Some households had to pay hundreds of euros more per month.
At Eneco, the number of customers with payment arrears started to increase in the summer months. According to a spokesperson, a few percent of households now have problems with payment. For a number of about two million customers, this still concerns several tens of thousands of people.
Vattenfall noticed at the beginning of last year that payment problems were increasing. Energy prices then rose rapidly after Russia attacked Ukraine in February. The problems subsided somewhat in the second quarter, but then rose again in the fourth quarter. This was due to the increase in advance amounts.
Strikingly enough, Essent customers had fewer payment problems than a year earlier, the company reports. It is not yet clear how this happens. Essent did see a small increase in payment arrears in December.
Since 1 January of this year, the government has set a price ceiling. This means that the government pays part of the energy bill. According to the energy companies, it is still too early to say what effect this will have on the number of people with payment problems.
