I am trying with little success to pay

Hopeful
12/11/2017 - 12:03

I am trying with little success to pay my Italian bills by direct debit from my UK Euro account, which I set up for the purpose. ENEL have sent me a form to fill in and sign. The IBAN details on the form extend to 27 characters, whereas the UK IBAN number is 22 long. Evidently I can't complete the form, it can't work. Do ENEL have a series of forms for different countries ( I see that the IBAN lengths for Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Germany are 20, 18, 18 and 22 respectively)? Or must I give up the idea of paying the commune and the utilities by direct debit? I urgently need help on this, as my Italian neighbours are moving away and cannot do the trips down to the post office any longer!

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There is a good chance the likes of ENEL would not have accepted a UK bank DD account, but I suspect they might have to now. Really your bank should be able to help you with the conversion of the format of the IBAN. Have a look at this wiki link, I think (never had to do this) you probably simply need to expand the account number with leading zeros to conver from 22 to 27 IBAN. I'm sure the likes of CurrencyFair and Transferwise must do this all the time when they transfer money, so it must be possible - good luck!

 I think It will be difficult to set a direct debit (in your UK account) for your italian bills. What I can suggest is: - A  transfer ( bonifico) but it will cost each time 25 pound, if I remember correctly. - Open a italian current account.  - Find help to manage your house in Italy.....Estate agant, accountant....  Regards  Francesca  lp in any way.Regards Francesca 

Hi, I went on the Enel site and was able to set up bills sent to my email which I payonline using PayPal. My water bill also comes in an email , that one I pay at the postoffice when I return to Italy. My taxes I pay up front for the whole year at any bank, you don't  even need an account.  We used an agency , sort of like a quicktax for 25 euro to do the calculation and paid it at a bank. Good luck!

First of all, check if ENEL has different forms for different countries. If not, it may be worth contacting them directly for clarification. I myself recently wanted pay for homework for college, I found https://edubirdie.com/pay-for-homework for this. And I couldn’t because I had problems with the card. It's good that I solved all the problems in one evening. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have had time to simply order the work for myself on time.

Hi Hopeful  Out of interest would you pay extra (1 or 2 euros for example) each time if you were to pay by direct debit?

We pay bills including ENEL and ETRA by UK credit card or Paypal on email receipt of the bill and this seems to work OK for us.

I chickened out of paying to Italian and German IBAN numbers before, I had a speeding fine for both these countries to pay, and I took all the details to my local bank so the bank cashier could make sure the right details were used. 

And MelanieClark, are you talking about IMU or another tax?  I was, and continue to be, really surprised that within a day of us asking the Comune for our IMU taxes to be calculated they send us, by email, the taxes to be paid and their calculations. Much easier than us trying to work it out and hoping we've got it right.

 

I pay utilities via direct debit. No extra costs beyond the normal costs of running an Italian current account. I also check my ENEL account online. No online for water and i use bottled gas to avoid the quarterly standing charges.

I must ask if my commune will calculate my IMU and rubbish charges.