We sent an invoice, but don’t pay yet, because we don’t even know how the hell it will all turn out! Well, we solved it, you can pay! Well, how did the deadline expire in the meantime? He can’t go there, he can come late! Now we have to develop it a bit, until then we won’t send you an invoice! That’s it, but now we’re sending two at the same time! But if it’s money, it’s worth paying for this later too! In fact, it will be good even later! Well, now everything will be fine, dear!
This is roughly the way to summarize the almost parodic tug-of-war that MVM Next was forced to present with residential gas bills in recent months, the one-time bill payer only scratched his head at the sight of the utility company’s silly letters. Of course, they didn’t do the invoicing out of joy, but out of compulsion, after the previous government forced a January utility stop campaign on them.
Do you even remember the January director’s stop? This was the big announcement that Viktor Orbán made into an instant meme as Prime Minister with a radiator image rang the bell. Since then, it is not entirely clear what they wanted to express with this picture, because it is probably not what many people associated it with, that Orbán is stealing a radiator, and after removing it, there is also a hearty gas explosion in the background:
Artwork by an unknown artist – Source: Viktor Orbán’s Facebook page
In any case, Orbán announced on January 21that due to the great cold, the January gas bills 30 percent it is owned by the government. Then later it turned out that it wasn’t that cold; the government he also shot it well above the amount of excess consumption, so with the discount people paid for less gas than in most of the past Januarys; not from the extreme cold in the first place, but from they had to be protected from the government’s own new overhead system introduced in 2022; and the government paid part of the discount with the energy companies (of course Not with Lőrince Mészáros), and for the rest the 93 also in the days before the electionpaid out a total of more than HUF 460 billion from public funds; on the other hand, it was certainly good that a pre-election inflation data is cosmeticized with it.
You could also be very happy at MVM. It’s not enough to Orbán’s campaign letter directed against him were also sent out with them, they also had to resolve the situation that it became clear on January 21 that the January consumption had to be invoiced in a completely different way. They also sent a letter to consumers asking them to wait until the details are known before paying the bills. And then came the real ordeal, in the form of four more letters:
- “Until the detailed conditions of the support are worked out, we asked our customers to wait for the time being by paying the pending invoices. We managed to find a solution so that the previously issued invoices do not need to be canceled due to the crediting of the discount, so the invoices issued so far and the ones to come must also be paid. If the payment deadline on the invoice that has already been issued but not paid has passed, we will not charge a late fee for this period interest,” they wrote on February 13.
- “In order to ensure that the utility stop discount appears accurately and transparently on your bill, we have made significant improvements to our invoicing system. Due to the time required for technical modifications, the sending out of gas bills has been temporarily suspended. During the replacement of missed bills, a shorter time than usual passed between the arrival of the previous bill and the current bill, and the indicated payment deadlines are close to each other. In order to avoid any inconvenience, the soon-to-be-arrived the payment deadline indicated on the gas bill is waived automatically, without request. The deadline for interest-free payment of the gas bill is June 1, 2026,” they wrote on April 30.
- On May 8th, a letter with the same word for word came, only at the end the payment deadline was already June 15th instead of June 1st.
- “As we wrote in our previous letter, in order to accurately credit the January utility stop discount, the issuing of gas invoices was temporarily suspended, so the invoices were not sent: two invoices were missed. In order to return to the usual monthly invoicing, the delay must be made up, so this time once again, exceptionally, we will send a gas invoice at a time close to the previous invoice. This will restore normal invoicing, In order to avoid any inconvenience, we will automatically waive the payment deadline indicated on the upcoming gas bill. The deadline for interest-free payment is July 3, 2026.
This is where we are now. The entire Hercehurca could roughly be described with the adjective that was also the object of the resistance stop in the form of a noun: gas.
