Dear Editor,
We would be very interested to hear from your readers if anyone else has had a similar nightmare that we have experienced with the EDP.
Back in 2005 we received a call one evening to ask if we would be interested in their new insurance policy to cover us for repairs to all electrical items in the house and also if we were unable to pay our bills due to poor health etc.
The amount taken from our account started at around €13, but without any warning has gradually increased to around €20. We never received any policy documents from them and the payments made during the 10 years amounts to approximately €2,000.
We have never made a claim, but in July of this year during the hottest week, our air conditioning unit broke down.
We employed a fully qualified electrical engineer who confirmed that the motherboard was no longer working.
He also confirmed that this part was now unavailable due to the age of the system and therefore we asked him to replace with a new one. And then the fun started!
After many phone calls to the EDP, no one could find any evidence of us holding a policy.
In frustration we copied bank statements showing the payments being made every month to no avail.
After several trips to the Portimão EDP, we finally found a young lady who, in a few minutes, found the policy.
Our engineer submitted a report to confirm it was impossible to repair our system and this was faxed to the insurers back in late July.
By October we had heard nothing so AFPOP wrote a letter on our behalf with the details of our claim and the EDP acknowledged receipt of this. We have now had three letters from the EDP informing us that they are looking into the matter and will get back to us within 15 working days but that is all.
AFPOP have spoken on our behalf with one of their lawyers and the suggestion now is for us to go to Faro and present our case to the European Centre for Consumer Rights Issues.
Should we really have to do this? Any comments would be most appreciated.
Richard Ballington
Ferragudo
