Paying Enel bills

[Helen Warner]

Originally Posted by Lakeside

Hate to say it,but the best option might be to maintain a bank account in Italy and pay by direct debit.Were there specific issues that drove you to close the existing account ? ( bank charges are troublesome but not a lot money in the scheme of things )

After 5 years of having an Italian bank whose only use was to pay this one Enel direct debit we decided to close it. We couldn't transfer money into it from the UK, couldn't get internet banking (it wouldn't accept our password), the bank card didn't work and needless to say with our poor Italian we didn't understand the 5/6 pages of bank statements which arrived twice yearly littered with what appeared to be deductions, with no balance at the end so we never knew how much we had in there. It meant going into the bank on our once a year visit to physically pay Euros in and check what we had in there. I could go on but fear you would die of boredom reading it.

[Helen Warner]

Originally Posted by johnsm13

Hi Helen

We have a house in Bagni di Lucca, near the church of San Pietro a Corsena.

Anyway, here are the details we managed to wring out of ENEL for foreign direct debit payments, including the elusive SWIFT code:

IBAN: IT85J0300201015000001822152;
BIC/SWIFT: BROMITR1T28

As you mentioned, the catch with this is that you'll have to pay your bank a fee. A paper bankers' draft is cheaper - last time round, as a stopgap, we got our bank (FirstDirect) to post one of these direct to ENEL in Rome - Enel Distribuzione SpA, 00198 Roma, via Ombrone 2. You need to get them to quote your account number. But the payment did get credited OK.

What we've done now, though, is to register for automatic payments via credit card - ie direct debits via a credit card.

To do this:

1) Go to the ENEL site...(https://www.enel.it/sportello_online...t.asp?funz=A01)...

2) Login (or register if you haven't already)

3) Navigate to La Tua Bolletta, then Paga La Bolletta

4) Click option 3, "tramite addebito sulla tua carta di credito"

Then you print off and return (by post) the request form.

I have to say that I haven't yet discovered if this has all been set up OK - I haven't had my next bill yet. But worth a try, maybe?

Mike Johnson

Hi Mike

Thank you for taking the trouble to provide all this information. I will go to the Enel website later today (when I have the strength) and see what happens. Enel did say, however, in an email to me that they no longer accept credit cards from abroad so it may well be back to the electronic transfer. Helen

[Helen Warner]

To : johnsm 13 :

Hi Mike

Do you have the name and address of the bank that you provided the IBAN and BIC/SWIFT for please. Thank you.

Helen

[Helen Warner]

Thought you might like to know that Enel have finally given me the information I need for paying by electronic transfer saying Le coordinate bancarie per effecttuare pagamenti dall'estero:
abi 05040 cab 02800 BANCA ANTONIANA POP. VENETA
C/C 00000010004Q - IBAN IT08D0504002800
00000010004Q - BIC/SWIFT ANTBIT2P625 - CIN D

They haven't provided an address but with all this information I should be able to find it out on the web.
Have posted this info just in case it helps anyone else in our area who is unable to pay by credit card.

[pigro]

just in case you didn't realise, you can get the address of the branch with that SWIFT from the same website I linked to earlier. The search tool works both ways - given a bank name & location, it will return the SWIFT code; given the SWIFT, it will return the branch details.

[nickbass]

can anyone help me? how do i go about transfering the enel and water account from the previous owners to myself? the last thing i want is no power and water. just in case, i shall take a generator with me.

[Helen Warner]

Hi Nickbass

Your query has been tagged onto the end of my query regarding how to find out about paying by electronic transfer and may not been seen. It might be better to start a new post of your own. I'm afraid I don't know the answer to your question but I'm sure others on this forum will be able to offer help.

Helen

[timwills]

Sorry for being l8 to the deb8... I only just joined the forums.
Presumably you closed your Italian account because it cost a fortune without being much help.
The account I have costs €5 per month (free for average balances of €3,500), 36 cash withdrawals from any ATM and all banking transactions included, with internet or English speaking telephone service and the use of all Post Offices and Banca Intesa in Italy.

The cool thing is that if you set up direct debits for utilities there is a security feature in case the bill comes in much higher than expected, you put the direct debit "in suspense".
This makes it easier for people who are not in Italy whenever the bills come but also; if there are no worries the payment goes through with no effort, if there is a problem you get to stop the payment before calling the utility (which is unlikely to be a pleasant experience but better done before the money is paid than after!).

[Brownie]

After a year of paying by a direct debit from our Nationwide CC, in May ENEL decided to send a mail saying payment had not been made. This started me on a hunt for an economical way of paying ENEL bills. SWIFT not being particularly economical for small payments. In the meantime you can either pay bills as they arrive or debit them to an italian issued card but having a bank account just for this purpose is a bit much.

We spoke to ENEL. They said it's all happened when they changed the card processor on their website and it'll be fixed "soon" chissa'!

The following is a bit fiddly but does work if like us you're not always at the property so your bills are small or quite variable.

- Just before you next go to your italian property, register an account at Poste.it and request that the activation code be sent to your italian property (they pretend to send abroad but don't count on it). Once issued, you have ten days to go back online and put in the activation code and your account is fully set up.
- When you get to Italy pop to your post office and get a CartaPostePay pre-paid debit card, it costs a couple of euros for the card, they give it to you immediately. You can add cash via your credit card / cash at the post office at that time.
- When you receive your ENEL bill, you can go to your ENEL account on line and pay using your CartaPostePay without charge
- Topping up is easy to do when you're in Italy but what happens when you're back in the UK - this bit's a little fiddly to setup but does work
- Go to paypal.it and register yourself as a new account, if you've an existing paypal account you'll need to use a different email address otherwise it'll not work. Paypal.it allow you to associate your CartaPostePay to your paypal account so do this. You can then "send" money to your Paypal account as you can do now - you can either send a dummy invoice to yourself or force a payment and Paypal will happily allow you to pay with a UK credit / debit card. The funds turn up in your Paypal.it account in minutes and you then instruct Paypal.it to send those onto your CartaPostePay account. This arrives in about two days. Commission is charged by Paypal and the PostOffice throughout this process but overall it cost be about 3 Euros to put 100 euros onto my PostePay account which is far less than the £25 my bank wanted for each and every SWIFT payment.

It's a little fiddly first time but is cheaper, faster, you've more control because when you pay you can see your ENEL account updated immediately and no visits to the bank. Hope it's not too confusing if someone wants me to explain the points again or in more detail, let me know

[Vicarym]

It's been mentioned that ENEL are no longer accepting credit card payments from abroad. Does anyone know if that applies to debit cards awell.

Would you believe I've just returned from Italy having cancelled the direct debits for ENEL and AQP - water !!

Thanks
Martin