EDF's final demand for zero euros - "pay up or risk being cut off"

Électricité de France, or EDF as it seems to prefer being called, might well be the world's largest utility company and its British subsidiary truly proud to be "powering the London 2012 Games" but that doesn't prevent it from making a complete arse of itself back home in France.

(screenshot from EDF commercial)

Yes, no matter how international it might be hiding behind those initials, EDF is, at its core, French.

And that means adding a totally new dimension to the way in which client relations are defined and conducted.

After all in France the customer is only sometimes king.

Consider the case of Jérémy Chassagne.

He lives with his girlfriend in the southwest of France, not far from the village of Roaillan in a house which the regional daily Sud Ouest describes as being "lost in the middle of vineyards."

It's in an area famous for its Graves Appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) wines and well worth a visit, but that's another matter entirely.

Chassagne pays his bills regularly but when the most recent one from EDF plopped through his letterbox he and his girlfriend were away and, as he told the paper, he was a little late in sending the cheque.

That meant of course that EDF sent him a reminder with the standard "request to disregard this letter if payment has already been made."

As it was obvious to Chassagne that the two letters had crossed in the post, that's exactly what he did.

All well and good, except last week he received a final demand from EDF telling him to pay his bill or risk being cut off.

How exactly he is supposed to pay though, has left him in something of a quandary.

You see, it's obvious from the amount at the end of the letter that EDF has already received his cheque, because the final demand is for precisely €0.

That's right, nothing, nada, niente or rien if you like.

"It's crazy and we're not sure what to do," he told the paper.

"We could wait and see whether EDF actually follows through with its threat to cut us off but that would probably mean we would have to pay a charge to be reconnected," he continued.

"Or we could send a cheque for €0 which is what my father (a retired EDF employee who obviously knows what he's talking about) advised us to do."

He's still waiting to hear again from EDF.

EDF's seasonal electricity bill greeting overcharge

Electricity doesn't come cheap, even in a country where most of it is produced by nuclear power stations.

But in a couple of cases this past week two customers of the French utility company, Electricité de France (EDF) had rather a nasty Christmas surprise.

Perhaps the energy giant was peeved by the French telecommunications company, France Télécom - Orange (FT), hogging the national headlines for presenting some of its mobile 'phone customers with astronomical bills, and although the Yuletide "gifts" it sent its two users pale in comparison to the €159,000 FT charged one of its clients, EDF almost managed to put a dampener on festive spirits.

The first case involved a retired woman in the south-western town of Orthez, who just days before Christmas Eve received a letter from her bank informing her that a payment for her electricity bill of a whopping €10,000 (and 23 centimes to be exact) had been rejected because of "insufficient funds".

An understandable shock to the woman (who wished to remain anonymous) especially as she said that her "annual consumption amounted to around €650" and made all the more unpalatable by the fact that she pays her bills by direct debit.

"Luckily I was sitting down when I received the call (from the bank)," she said.

"I started shaking and was completely disoriented," she continued.

"It's the sort of thing you see on television happening to others and all I can say is that people check their bills," she said.

Sound advice without doubt, and even though EDF has admitted there was a "rare error" in its calculations guess what?

In the very same week another customer - again in the south-west of France, but in a different town, also made the headlines when he received a bill for... wait for it...just over €69,000.

It was an annual bill but one that nonetheless surprised Matthieu Moulierac, a pâtissier in the town of Saint-Émilion, who said he was used to paying far less.

"On average the annual bill is between two thousand and two thousand five hundred euros," he told French news, seemingly unworried at being massively overcharged as EDF had also enclosed a letter apologising for the mistake and informing him that he would shortly be receiving an amended bill for the right amount.

As far as Moulierac was concerned, the story should have ended there, except when he took a look at this bank statement, lo and behold the amount had already been deducted from his account.

He too pays his EDF bills by direct debit and the bank had apparently already authorised the payment.

A quick 'phone call rectified the error initially made by EDF and then compounded by the bank.

But although Moulierac's Christmas and New Year were not soured by the prospect of having to battle to correct a mistake that was in no way of his making, those words of wisdom from the woman at the centre of the first tale ring rather true - and not just at this time of the year.

Happy Holidays.