Automatic deductions of utilities

Hi,

Kinda'...

There's a so called "csoportos beszedés" billing, straight from your Hungarian checking account. You have to set it up individually with the different utilities and/or the different bill processing agencies they use. The procedure is unique for each of course.

You can set a monthly limit for each, but other than that, you are pretty much at their mercy for not overcharging you, collecting the same month twice, or helping themselves to a hefty advance because they can.

Paying the bills manually is a good sanity check I never dared forgo.
It's fairly simple through on-line banking, you only need a scanned copy of the "sarga csekk" invoice from your friends.

Many thanks

I have set up a direct debit with my bank...A limit on each company...I have never had a problem in 7 years....UPC, Electricity, House charge, Gas etc...Mark

We had Tigaz for natural gas, it was by far the worst offender in random billing. Maybe you are with a different provider.

The gas system is a regular payment each month..The meter is then read once a year and usually I must pay for the excess gas used .I hav never have had a problem...I am English but get a neighbour to check .
Perhaps I should be more vigilant but so far it seems to work..

Yes, you can have it all  from a HU bank account.
Have to go in and set it up in person from what I know.
The only monthly deduction we have taken out is the common costs for our flat.
My husband puts just enough into our HU account to cover 3 to 6 months at a time.
All other bills we like to pay in cash in person. When we travel home to the US we stop all cable service first.
We go into every utility co. and they hold billing until we return, we do have to pay for monthly service on all utilities but as we have our own meters we don't have to pay for use when we are gone.
The billing is for monthly paperwork just a couple bucks a month for each bill.
My husband doesn't like to have too much money in forints so we don't keep much $ in HU banks.
He is strange maybe that way, grew up in Hungary and doesn't trust much about banks here or anywhere for that matter.
Most of our ex pat friends who were raised in HU also have US bank accounts and pay just small bills on line.
We do send in our monthly meter readings for gas on line but pay in the post.
If there is any issue when we are out of HU our neighbor writes us and lets us know. We usually leave a few hundred bucks cash with her before we go anywhere.
Sort of strange and sad, HU seem to trust banks less then ex pats do, probably because they grew up during a time where no one trusted any insitution. I know my MIL owned her own business before WW11 and they took it away, let her manage it for them though... Great spot too, right on Vaci Utca.
We also pay for space to park our car when we are gone. Had friends watch our car once and family another time. Can't trust anyone really both times are cars had been used without permission and run into the ground.