Endesa asks for the ID of a customer dead for 47 years to cancel power supply

Endesa asks for the ID of a customer dead for 47 years to cancel power supply

What does it take to cancel an electricity contract in the name of someone who has been buried for half a century? According to the answer Endesa gave a customer who wanted to cut the supply to an old house in a village in Andalusia, Spain, the answer is: the deceased's national ID card. The contract holder died 47 years ago. The document shown on the latest bill starts with the letters SB, a format the company no longer accepts as valid. To get the real ID, you first have to request the death certificate, and to request the death certificate you need the volume and page number of the civil registry where the death was recorded. The family has neither piece of data. The circle closes in on itself.

The administrative loop blocking the supply cancellation

The situation is as common as it is Kafkaesque. An inherited house, an electricity contract nobody has touched in decades, and a company responding with a procedure designed for another world. The family in this particular case — an old property in an Andalusian town, with electrical wiring less than 20 years old — wanted to cut the supply. They asked Endesa for instructions. Endesa asked for the holder's details. The holder died in 1977. The ID number on the bill is no good. And the death certificate requires a volume and page number nobody keeps.

Some argue the quickest way out is to call pretending to be the deceased. "From my own experience, call in the deceased's name, give all their details and say you want to cancel the contract," one participant sums up. Others have gone down the route of transferring the contract first, which in theory is an administrative procedure requiring no inspection or electrical installation certificate. The catch: if the distributor finds the installation is more than 20 years old, it can demand a new certificate. And if the supply is cancelled, restoring it later means a new connection, with the corresponding certified electrical certificate and a cost of around 200 euros.

Why is simply stopping payment not enough?

Stopping payment sounds like an elegant solution: let them chase the dead man. The problem is that the debt does not disappear with the holder. If the contract is linked to a bank account belonging to a living heir, the company can claim against that account. And if non-payment leads to the supply being cut, the house is left without power and with no chance of signing a new contract without paying up and hiring an electrician.

The most optimistic calculation assumes the company will not pursue a debt owed by a deceased holder. The pessimistic scenario is that the distributor blocks any future procedure on that supply point until the situation is regularised. There are documented cases of contracts stuck for months: they cannot be modified, cannot be cancelled, and the contracted capacity cannot be raised. The distributor claims the file is with its technical services and that they will call. They don't.

The electrical certificate: the hidden cost of cancellation

Here is the detail almost nobody mentions at the start. Cancelling an electricity contract is not just paperwork. It is a decision with consequences. Once the supply is cut, re-signing requires an electrical installation certificate endorsed by the competent authority of the autonomous community. If the installation is more than 20 years old, the distributor may also demand a full inspection. The cost of the certificate plus the new connection can exceed 200 euros, not counting possible renovations.

The alternative several participants consider more sensible is not to cancel but to transfer the contract. The procedure is administrative, not technical, and in theory requires no certificate. The repeated advice is to do it through the last-resort supplier, the one linked to the distributor, because it minimises the chance of them asking for additional technical documentation. One warning, though: make sure the contract stays on the regulated tariff (PVPC) and is not moved to a fixed-term market tariff. "If it doesn't say Endesa Energía XXI, S.L., they've moved you to the free market," one participant warns.

The burofax route and the death certificate

When the phone doesn't work, there is paper. The advice circulating is to send a burofax (a certified fax-style letter) with the death certificate and a formal request to annul all contracts linked to that ID. Not a cancellation, but an annulment. The difference matters: a cancellation leaves the supply point inactive; an annulment due to the holder's death terminates the contractual relationship. The company is obliged to process it, even though the procedure is not designed for it.

The underlying problem is that suppliers apply standardised protocols to situations that are anything but standard. A contract from 47 years ago, with an obsolete ID format and a deceased holder, fits no form. The electronic administration system, which should simplify access to the death certificate, requires data the family does not have. The result is a labyrinth where every closed door leads to another.

The light stays on. The dead man is still the contract holder. And Endesa is still waiting for an ID that exists only in a civil registry nobody knows how to reach.