For 15 square meters

Italian man ordered to pay 260,000 euros for electricity

A jeweler in Venice recently experienced a nasty surprise. He was asked to pay more than 260,000 euros for electricity for his 15 square meter store on St. Mark's Square. The man had previously switched to a new energy supplier.

In just two months, the company billed him for a consumption of one million kilowatt hours. Specifically, Gianmaria Tiozzo is to pay 282,348 euros by March 12. "That's a sum that (...) I definitely don't intend to pay," said the Venetian. He has already contacted the electricity supplier and asked them to cancel the bill. In recent years, Tiozzo has paid an average of 1200 to 1300 euros for electricity for two months for his 15 square meter store.

Mistake probably made
Mistakes with electricity and water bills are not uncommon in Italy. In December, for example, an 88-year-old woman received a bill for over 15,339 euros from her water supplier. Half of the money had already been transferred by her bank because she had issued a direct debit authorization.

This upset the senior citizen so much that she was taken to an intensive care unit. The Italian woman should actually have only had to pay 65 euros between August and October. It is suspected that the error was due to a faulty meter or an error during meter reading. The water supplier then apologized to the family and refunded the amount. However, the woman died three weeks later.