January 10 saw the end of the protected market for gas bills. Millions of non-vulnerable families will have to change tariffs by deciding whether to stay with the same seller (but with a different and free offer) or turn to other sellers. In recent weeks, non-vulnerable customers who were in protection received a letter from their supplier offering new tariffs. They will be able to select one of these. Alternatively, they can look for a new gas operator on the market on their own (for example, by consulting the tariffs published on Arera’s portalofferte.it). Those who do nothing will be transferred to the Placet service which at this stage is more convenient than the free one. To understand how to move you need a code, the Placet code, and finding it is a real treasure hunt. Here’s some help from consumers.
How to do
«Given that the offers on the free gas market that are more convenient than Placet and vulnerability can be counted on the fingers of one hand, in Rome and Milan there are 3 offers out of almost 500, 0.66% and 0.63% respectively, it is It is essential that the consumer, before moving on to the free market, enters the Placet code reserved for him in the Offer Portal, which however is difficult to find. This is why we have drawn up a guide on the use of the Portal in which we also report the codes” states Marco Vignola, head of the energy sector of the National Consumers Union.
«We remind consumers that they do not have to change supplier by responding to a telephone or door-to-door proposal. You must always go and look for the seller using the Arera Offer Portal” concludes Vignola.
The handbook on the use of the Offer Portal
1) Before looking for a supplier you need to know your consumption. Look at your bills, on the internal pages you will find your annual consumption. To view your consumption history you can also consult the Arera Consumption Portal (access via SPID).
2) Go to the Arera offers portal, entering your annual consumption and the postcode of the city where you live, so that you can compare all the offers available in your area, ordering them according to the estimated annual expenditure.
For gas you can already compare the free market offers both with those of the Vulnerability Protection Service (for example if you are 75 years or older) and with the Placet in derogation, by entering the offer code of your Placet, which is that of the seller which is serving you under protection and which is indicated on your bill.
In particular, when in the Offer Portal, in the second search screen, they tell you “If you have received an offer, enter your code here to compare it with the others available”, then you must take the offer code of the offer from the list below seller who is already providing you with protected gas service and insert it in the dedicated space. If you are vulnerable then say Yes to the question: “Are you a Vulnerable customer?”.
Know that if usually for each service (electricity or gas), each seller must offer two types of Placet offer, one with a fixed price and one with a variable price, in the case of the Placet in derogation, i.e. dedicated to those who, currently served under protection, does not make any choice of an offer in the free market, the offer is only at a variable price. So when you are asked “What offers do you want to see?” the answer, which usually lights up automatically by entering the codes listed below, is Variable price and not Fixed price.
3) Don’t choose unknown companies without first checking their reliability, for example by trying to answer these questions:
– do they answer the phone? To test, call them not choosing the telephone option reserved for new customers but the one useful for submitting a complaint or contesting the bill.
– have they been condemned by the Antitrust for unfair practice (just go to the search engine for the weekly Antitrust bulletins and enter the name of the company you are interested in)? Keep in mind, however, that larger companies, having many customers, are more likely to end up in the crosshairs of the Antitrust compared to small and unknown ones which more easily escape the net of justice.
– check their reputation online.
4) When you have identified the best offer, download the offer details and keep it on your computer.
5) Be careful when the offer expires. It is always indicated on the Offer Portal (take a screenshot of the screen).
5) Contact the company, and ask, for the offer you found (checking that the name and code of the offer corresponds) to send you the contractual conditions, in particular the General Supply Conditions (CGF) and the Technical Conditions economic (CTE) with the expenditure comparability sheet established by Arera for all sellers.
6) Check that there are no additional paid services. Among the tricks is to combine an offer with home insurance (for breakdowns), health or other services that you have not requested in order to increase the price (the purchase of energy efficiency products such as light bulbs, the monitoring of consumption…)
7) Sign the contract and send it to the seller before the offer deadline indicated on the Portal. Otherwise they could cheat you, claiming that the offer had now expired and no longer valid and, with the excuse of having notified you with a letter, which perhaps you never received, or an email, find yourself with a more onerous contract than the one you had choice.
Fears to dispel
Know that by changing supplier: it is not necessary to replace the meter, there can be no interruptions in supply; if the seller goes bankrupt, continuity of supply is guaranteed by the services of last resort. In the event of faults on the line or your meter, nothing changes, since the fault repairs are the responsibility of the distributor, not the seller.
After having signed the new supply contract, the new seller will activate the procedure for changing the seller (switching) and terminating the old contract (withdrawal).