Can anyone help?  My Enel bills

marconi Image
03/01/2015 - 08:55

Can anyone help?  My Enel bills have been paid by dirct debit from my italian bank account for 6 years. Suddenly the bank has stopped paying. Enel responded by cutting my electricity supply.  The bank manager will not respond to my emails even though I have written in Italian and I cannot find any way of contacting Enel from the UK.  There are sufficient funds in the bank account to cover the bills.  Why would they just stop paying?

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Marconi, you need to call and talk to your bank manager as it is obvious that the problem starts with them. Italian banks are reluctant to answer emails unless you are well known by the bank. Next time you are in Italy, try to have a talk to a consultant, explain the fact that you have problems when you are overseas and try to get a contact name and email address that you can use, should the need arise.mwe try to keep an excellent relationship with our bank (know their names, bring little presents and send postcards) and I can assure you that they are extremely helpful and it does make a difference. Meanwhile, insist on talking to someone at the bank, as they are the ones who have the solution to your problem. Good luck! smiley

I have a similar issue. When I was last in Italy I applied for a bank account which never came through. The Enel site will not even accept my codice fiscale, no matter how I enter it.The electrical account exists under my codice fiscale, I paid one bill in person 4 months ago.I will be in Italy in 2 weeks.What is the easiest bank for a foreigner  to open an account with for paying bills? Is it possible to pay with a postal account?  

I don't believe your Codice is relevant to their site, you need to register with the site, then link your customer number to the registration. Afraid I can't help you with the best none resident bank a/c, perhaps others here can. However once you are registered on their site you can access your bills. You may be then able to pay them via something like Transferwise and/or the likes of pre-paid Euro cards e.g FairFX or Caxton.

Thanks, I found the secret, they were parsing the codice fiscale against the info I'd entered so it worked when I used my middle name. I seem to be registered but cannot actually find my bills. Do you think I can find a bill there even if it was already sent in the mail>So many pages and pictures and buttons, isn't it obvious to them why someone would register there?for example I am looking at this page:https://www.enelenergia.it/mercato/libero/it-IT/clienti/area_clienti# thanksJane

Jane, looks like I can be of little help to you as the link you give is for the "other side" (well I think it is). From what I gather they spilt off ENEL into 2 parts ome time back and you and I are perhaps with what is in effect different companies. I translate all of their pages and find little difficulty (no more than crap UK companies) finding my way around them. Sorry I can't recall if my older bills were there when I joined and in any case your lot may do it different. I would suggest you expole their site and see where it takes you... It would be great if you post back your findings for others that follow. HOWEVER make sure you have the right site, our service is "Servizio di maggior tutela" . You may need to look at any bill you have to make sure you are accessing the correct site (name of the part we are with "Servizio di maggior tutela" is in top right side of bill). If you look at this LINK it is where they split off into separate parts. The other part is "mercato libero". Confusing I know...frown

Yes I did suspect something like that. At one point there was a place to enter the contract number (I haven't been able to do this yet), but replied that there were no such contracts for "mercato libero" but I cannot find anything in the other part yet.... the contract number for sure is linked to my codice fiscale in the real world, but do I need to link them on the site? So far it doesn't seem to know what contract belongs to me to show me any bills.

Yes it is Servizio di maggior tutela... however the account there does not know my contract number appartently. Did you actually enter that manually way back when? Or did it display the contract automatically according to your codice fiscale? thanks

On this link:https://www.enelservizioelettrico.it/it-IT/contrattoit tells you how to open a new contract, etc. But it does not seem to list my contract, nor does it give me the option of enterting it.

Sorry Jane it was "way back then", but I do recall that after registering on the site I had to link my "Customer Number" (again top right on bill, but with no spaces) . I'll see if I can have a look by registering under a different user to se how they do it these days...

The next day when I logged in, it prompted me for my contract number.... finally. Now I have copies of my two outstanding bills and I will hopefully get someone in Italy to pay them for me.Going forward I would like to buy a prepaid Postepay card to pay the bills when I get to Italy. Does anyone know if this is a simple procedure, or something more complicated like opening a bank account? Any restrictions on non-residents optaining one?thanks for all your help.

Glad to hear you got sorted Singer. Getting the pre-paid postpay from what I understand is straightforward, but I'm not sure (never tried one) if they are not a bit like electron cards which are not accepted in a lot of places. I've tried before with a UK pre-paid currency Euro card (VISA) and that did not work, but that could have just been their poor payment site. I'm sure I read they will not accept a UK normal credit cards. Then again I doubt very much a UK company would accept an Italian credit card. I've not had to use them, but like I said you could pay by Transferwise or CurrencyFair . Transferwise is cheaper for anything under €200 and the latter for anything over. They both are well known, safe and easy to use, however the devil may be in the detail of getting your payment to the right place in the company you are paying. At least with ENEL (unlike Telecom) you also get to se the payment slip with your online bill. Looks like the bill tells you what you would need to put as a reference.  You will also need their IBAN, which I assume is that shown on the direct debit mandate they have with the bill.