AK helped against company

Botched up: Tenant should pay twice for heating

The heating costs are high enough as it is, but one Carinthian woman was sent double bills.

(Bild: Soluto)

When incompetence meets stubbornness, situations like this can happen - a tenant in Carinthia received two separate bills for the 2021 heating period. Although she reported the error, she was even sent reminders years later ...

And suddenly a tenant in Carinthia received two heating bills at once - with different customer numbers. The tenant immediately reported the error to the billing company, which assured her that it would be rectified immediately. But a year later, it was the same story: two different bills for her apartment, this time with a demand for additional payment of more than 1000 euros.

When she then received several more reminders, the desperate woman turned to the Chamber of Labor. "The tenant was able to prove that she had indeed made monthly advance payments," explains AK consumer protector Claudia Prettner. "We discovered that these had been allocated to a different customer account and therefore to a different apartment." However, the company remained stubborn and no solution was found despite repeated contact from AK.

A refund instead of an additional payment
So the only option was to go to court - only then did the company show insight, cancel the original invoices and draw up a new heating bill. "According to the new calculations, the tenant in question is even entitled to a repayment of almost 800 euros," says Prettner. The difficult economic situation is currently leading to the Chamber of Labor being contacted more and more frequently.

"The increasing number of inquiries about housing and tenancy law shows that people urgently need our support," explains AK President Günther Goach. "We will not allow money to be taken out of tenants' pockets without justification!"