Arms customers are petitioning the European Parliament to look into bulked billing and the lack of a pro rata solution, causing “great distress to many young and old”.

The online petition by the Up in Arms lobby group, calling for an “honest, accurate billing service”, is the latest in a series of actions reflecting the rising concern customers are overpaying for electricity due to the billing method.

According to the petition, consumption over a six-month or longer period is in some instances priced and charged at “crippling, rising tariffs” due to the lack of regular meter readings or offline smart meters.  

Read: Residents plan lawsuit against ARMS

Reviews and redistribution by a bulking committee set up to reconcile the bills could take months and cost “fierce” interest rates, leaving consumers seeking loans to clear the bills for fear of disconnection, the petition adds.

Meanwhile, a video linked to this petition refers to one particular family, which “has been forced onto the streets due to a disputed bulked bill”.

As a consequence of this bill, the family has since February allegedly lost thousands of euros in revenue from their business of 12 years.

Customers were told they would be charged a fee of 13 per cent to rework the bills

Patricia Graham from Up in Arms told the Times of Malta that residents are complaining of bulking, whereby they receive a bill covering a four- or six-month period, but their consumption for these four or six months is lumped into a two-month period.

They therefore incur the highest tariff rates because of the pro rata allocation.

Read: Tenants will have to pay €516 to benefit from residential tariffs

This usually happens when customers receive a couple of estimates or no-reading bills, followed by an actual bill, Ms Graham explained.

One example is a customer who received a four-month bill which shows that she was charged for zero units for the first two months, bulking all her consumption into the following two months. Her bill, totalling around €1,700 for water and electricity and supposedly covering December until April, lists zero units until February, cramming more than 4,000 electricity units into March and April. 

However, when customers contacted Arms, they were told they would be charged a fee of 13 per cent of the total to rework the bills, Ms Graham noted.

Ms Graham forms part of a group of residents who are filing a class action lawsuit against the utility administrator Arms, joining a fight already taken up by Darren Cordina and Melvin Polidano, who challenged the authorities over what they claim is a breach of EU directives.

John Vassallo, a former ambassador of Malta to the EU, said he too will be taking Enemalta to court, claiming several breaches of European law.

Ms Graham was also behind a class action suit which resulted in the claimants, all EU nationals, eventually being refunded after they were charged more than their Maltese neighbours due to the ‘A’ on their residency card.

Contacted by the Times of Malta about the issue of bulking, an Arms spokeswoman said that if a customer received two bills based on estimates, the next one would be issued based on an actual reading, with the consumption spread over six months.

She asked the newspaper to refer any cases in which a customer received two estimate bills and one actual, the latter being calculated over two months, so that Arms could investigate these particular cases.

The utilities were “exercising every effort to make all meters reachable, thereby eliminating no readings and estimates, hence removing the need for bulking,” the spokeswoman added.

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