From May 2024, residents of the Voronezh region will receive a new version of receipts for electricity from the TNS Energy Voronezh company. The innovation will affect all subscribers – individuals. And, as we found out, there are 1,123,988 of them. “MINE!” asked the sales company questions about the main nuances of the innovation.
Starting from May, the “Payment” column of receipts will have three sub-items:
- “Mandatory payment” – the amount of payment for electricity consumed in the previous month (according to the meter readings that you submitted a month earlier);
- “Recommended payment” is essentially an advance payment for electricity for the current month;
- “Payment including recommended payment” is an amount that includes both types of payment at the same time.
The recommended payment of the TNS Energy division has already been introduced in other regions (in the Rostov region, for example, it has been in effect since 2021). As the company explained to us, the amount of the recommended payment will not be static. It will be calculated based on the subscriber’s average monthly electricity consumption for at least the last six months.
Introducing the recommended payment in other regions, the sales company explained that such a payment “will be useful for those who prefer never to have debts, not to remember about payment on the last day, not to stand in line at the terminal during the peak of utility payments.” In other words, the mandatory payment is what you must pay for April, and the recommended payment is the payment for the electricity that, according to TNS Energy forecasts, you will consume in May.
Is payment of the recommended payment required?
No. We pay for train trips and mobile communications in advance. But in the case of public utilities, no one can force subscribers to pay for a resource that has not yet been consumed.
How can I now pay the bill without the recommended payment?
As TNS Energy Voronezh told us, if a subscriber has auto-payment enabled, then only the amount of the mandatory payment will be automatically debited. True, in other regions – for example, in the Novogorod region – difficulties arose when introducing the recommended payment. There, the system automatically deducted both mandatory and recommended payments from the subscriber’s account.
But if you pay bills manually, you should be more careful. The fact is that when the QR code is read by an operator at a bank or a payment terminal, the total amount will be displayed, taking into account the recommended payment. That is, the subscriber must inform the operator himself that he wants to make only a mandatory payment, or select the appropriate option in the terminal.
Accordingly, when paying a receipt on the bank’s website or using the default application, the total amount of mandatory and recommended payments will also be billed. And in order to make only the mandatory payment, the subscriber will need to manually replace this total amount with the mandatory payment amount. When paying in the TNS Energy application, the total amount will also be displayed. But there you will need to uncheck the “Recommended payment” box.
How will the recommended payment be calculated?
If the subscriber pays the recommended payment, then next month he will receive a recalculation of the main payment. For example, if the recommended payment was 400 rubles and was made, and the main payment next month according to the meter will be 500 rubles, then this main payment will decrease by 400 rubles and amount to 100 rubles.
It will be more difficult in cases where the main payment is less than the advance payment made a month earlier. For example, the recommended payment made is 400 rubles, and the main payment is 300 rubles. In this case, the company will owe the subscriber 100 rubles.
However, in the receipt for which the company itself will owe, the amount of the recommended payment will still be displayed. That is, in order not to overpay large sums in advance, you can refuse to make an advance payment for one or two months.
