Disputing a bill and filing a consumer complaint

Everyday life · Last reviewed: 2026-08-24

Find the right door first

The first thing that determines whether a complaint succeeds is not being right but the address. A complaint filed with the wrong authority is usually not rejected; it is forwarded to the competent body or closed with an answer that it falls outside their powers. Both waste time, and meanwhile the company's own deadlines keep running. Five minutes spent before writing on the question of who regulates this service saves weeks later.

The map's logic is this: in REGULATED sectors, meaning energy, water, telecoms and post, the company has an approved text it must observe, and the regulator checks whether it does. In unregulated areas, meaning goods bought from a shop or a service performed, the measure is general consumer legislation and the supervising body is the Consumer Protection Commission. Conciliation commissions are open to both worlds: their purpose is not to punish but to bring the parties to a settlement.

Step one: a written submission to the company

Even when the eventual door is clear, the first step is almost always the same: a written submission to the company. There are two reasons. The first is legal: regulators and conciliation commissions expect the consumer to have contacted the other side first, and the sentence that you wrote to the company and received this answer is the backbone of the file. The second is practical: most disputes are settled at this step, because most problems come from error rather than bad faith.

The written submission must be provable. Acceptable forms: a confirmation from the company's online form, a record of a sent email, a reference number for a letter handed in, or a registered post receipt. There is only one unacceptable form: the telephone call. A call centre saying your report has been logged does not mean the log is in your hands.

Step two: a complaint to the regulator

If the company does not answer, or the answer does not satisfy, the regulator's turn comes. On the energy and water side, that this route works is measurable: the Energy and Water Regulatory Commission announced in its own news pages that, after reviewing a consumer complaint, it obliged a water operator to remove contract clauses that did not match its approved general terms. Writing to the regulator is therefore not a symbolic gesture; it can reach as far as changing the company's own text.

On the communications side the competent body is the Communications Regulation Commission. For postal services it approves the general terms of universal service providers and supervises compliance with measures protecting the confidentiality of correspondence; its regulatory documents also carry deadlines for consumer complaints, with a period of up to six months foreseen for complaints about postal items. For telephone and internet services, contract conditions and service quality also fall within this body's field.

A complaint to a regulator has a limit, and knowing it in advance prevents disappointment: regulators check COMPLIANCE WITH THE RULES first and foremost; they do not compensate your individual loss. They can force a change of practice, have a clause conflicting with the general terms removed, or impose an administrative penalty, but they do not usually order that a specific sum be paid to you. For a monetary claim you need either agreement with the company, a conciliation commission or a court.

The conciliation commission: settlement without court

According to the Consumer Protection Commission's guidance, alternative resolution of disputes between consumers and traders is an out-of-court conciliation procedure on a VOLUNTARY basis, carried out through conciliation commissions. Voluntariness runs both ways: you are not obliged to apply, but the other side is not obliged to take part either. On the other hand, a company's refusal to participate creates a context that counts against it at later stages.

The most attractive feature of this route is its cost: according to the commission's own explanation, conciliation commissions are FREE for the parties; only fees for representation, expert reports, specialists and translations are paid, and none of those is mandatory. The second attractive feature is speed: the procedure is quick and concludes within up to ninety days with a conciliation proposal. Compared with court proceedings, that is a marked difference in both money and time.

Commissions are divided into SECTORAL and GENERAL according to subject and area of operation. Sectoral conciliation commissions are set up in particular fields; the commission's explanation notes the existence of sectoral commissions for disputes in financial services, insurance and supplementary social insurance. Other disputes go to general commissions. Stating which category your matter falls into speeds up routing the file to the right commission.

How a conciliation commission is requested

The process starts with an application, and there are several channels. According to the commission's guidance, an application can be filed through the institution's portal in the conciliation commission section, by fax, by post or at a counter in its central and territorial units; the electronic online dispute resolution platform is also listed as a channel. In choosing a channel there is only one criterion: being able to prove that what you sent arrived.

The file to prepare before applying is the natural output of the steps described in the earlier articles: proof of purchase or the account record, the letter you sent the company, evidence of filing, the company's answer (or the period that passed without one) and a concrete statement of your request. Saying you were wronged is not a request; asking for a specific sum to be refunded, for a line to be removed from the bill, or for a contract clause not to be applied, is.

Anatomy of the submission

A good consumer submission is short and dull; it is chronological rather than emotional. It has five parts. First WHO: your name, address, contact details, account or customer number. Second TO WHOM: the company's full legal name. Third WHAT HAPPENED: events in date order, each with a document reference. Fourth WHAT I RELY ON: the relevant clause of the contract or of the approved general terms. Fifth WHAT I WANT: a single-sentence request, numerical and enforceable.

There are also things not to do. Do not squeeze several matters into one submission: each dispute needs its own file, and a mixed submission gets closed off with whichever part is easiest to answer. Do not write estimated figures; if you cannot calculate, ask for the amount to be recalculated. And most importantly, do not use abusive descriptions of the other side. A file's strength comes from how well documented it is, not from how angry you are.

After sending the submission, one thing is done: a note in the calendar. The company's answering deadline, the regulator's processing time and the conciliation procedure's ninety days all run separately. Someone who does not write those dates down does not know where they stand and usually gives up saying nothing happened. Yet most files end without result not because they were abandoned but because they were never followed up.

Subscription contracts: the most frequent dispute

A large share of consumer complaints arise from fixed-term subscription contracts: mobile telephony, internet and television packages. The Consumer Protection Commission publishes separate guidance on this, because disputes always gather at the same three points: the term of the contract and its automatic extension, the fee charged for early exit, and campaign conditions changed afterwards.

All three have one common defence: keeping the text you signed. A copy of a contract signed in a shop is given to you; with a contract concluded online, the confirmation email and the terms page valid on that day have to be saved. A year later, saying that is not what you were told is worthless without that day's text. Taking a screenshot takes a minute; being left without evidence costs a contract period.

The second practical point is to note the contract's end date. Most fixed-term contracts continue on certain conditions once the term expires, and exit may require notice within a specific window. Missing that window means paying for another unwanted period. Setting a reminder for one month before the end date, on the day you sign, removes the problem entirely.

Cross-border shopping and foreign traders

When something goes wrong with goods bought from a trader in another European Union country, consumer rights do not disappear but the route to enforcing them gets longer. In such disputes you again write to the trader first; if that produces nothing, cross-border consumer assistance networks and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms come into play. Your counterpart in Bulgaria is again the Consumer Protection Commission, which routes the case to the right mechanism.

With traders outside the European Union the position is markedly weaker. When a cheap item from a distant country turns out faulty, the cost of return postage often exceeds the item itself, and no Bulgarian institution holds enforcement power over that trader. This is not advice to avoid buying; it is advice to count the risk inside the price. The real cost of an expensive device bought from a trader with no service network is not printed on the label.

At this point the payment method becomes a defence. With card payments a chargeback procedure through your bank works in some situations and opens a route independent of the trader. The conditions and deadlines of that route differ by bank and card scheme, but the rule is constant: the window is short and closes if you are late. Writing to your bank on the day you noticed the problem is far more effective than writing a month later.

Language: which language the submission is written in

Submissions to institutions in Bulgaria are made in Bulgarian, and this is the practical obstacle foreign residents trip over most often. A submission written in English is not invalid, but it lengthens processing time and in some cases comes back with a request for translation. The most efficient route is to write in Bulgarian and attach a copy in your own language: the institution can then process it and you know what you signed.

A sworn translator is not required for the translation; where the institution is not asking for the translation of an official document, comprehensible Bulgarian is enough. One point needs care, though: the request sentence. The rest of the submission may be in slightly awkward Bulgarian, but the request must be unambiguous. Getting help with that one sentence is both cheaper and sufficient compared with translating the whole document.

With companies the position is more flexible: most large providers accept correspondence in English and keep English-speaking staff in customer service. Even so, sending a critical document in English alone, whether a contract termination, a formal objection or a withdrawal notice, is risky; sending it in two languages removes the risk at no cost.

Deadlines: what you lose and when

Several clocks run at once in consumer disputes, and confusing them is the most expensive mistake. The first clock is the life of the right itself: two years for faulty goods, fourteen days to withdraw from a distance contract. The second is the other side's answering period: thirty days for a trader. The third is the deadline for approaching an authority and varies by sector; for complaints about postal items a period of up to six months is foreseen.

Their starting points differ too: one runs from the delivery date, one from the day a notice arrived, one from the day the event occurred. The practical answer is simple and needs no table: at every step write one line giving the date and which deadline it starts. On 12 March I wrote to the company; the thirty days end on 11 April. That one line tells you where you stand when you reopen the file three months later.

It also helps to know what happens when a deadline passes. If the life of the right itself has expired, the claim falls away and there is no cure. If the other side's answering period has expired, you lose nothing and gain something: the silence is now a fact in your file. If the deadline for approaching an authority has passed, that door closes but others may stay open. Whoever distinguishes these three knows on which date to worry, and usually finds there is no need.

Five common mistakes

• •Complaining by telephone and leaving no written trace, then meeting the answer that you never approached them.
• •Approaching the wrong authority: an electricity bill to the consumer body, faulty goods to the energy regulator.
• •Paying nothing at all on a disputed bill and meeting the consequences of arrears even while in the right.
• •Writing no request into the submission: saying you were wronged produces no outcome an institution can apply.
• •Not tracking deadlines; a file that was never closed ends without result because nobody followed it.

If conciliation does not work: the force of the proposal, the court and the payment order

So far this article has explained how to write to the company, to the regulator and to the conciliation commission. When the process stalls, two questions remain — the two people actually ask — and neither was answered above: is the commission's outcome BINDING, and what happens if nothing works?

First, bindingness. The Commission for Consumer Protection's own explanation is strikingly precise and deserves to be read literally: the proceedings conclude within up to ninety days with a CONCILIATION PROPOSAL. Each party to the dispute may accept that proposal — approve or reject it — by a WRITTEN STATEMENT to the relevant general or sectoral conciliation commission within TEN WORKING DAYS of receiving it. The approval has the force of an AGREEMENT between the parties. The conciliation agreement is deemed concluded on the date of the last written statement by which the proposal is accepted. Read that again: on its own the proposal binds nobody; it becomes binding through WRITTEN acceptance by both sides, and from that point it binds like a contract.

Three practical consequences follow. First, the window is short and it runs from RECEIPT; in the period when a proposal is expected, the letterbox and the inbox are checked daily, because ten working days pass unnoticed. Second, silence is not acceptance: a proposal left unanswered is a proposal lost. Third and most valuable, once acceptance has happened the nature of what you hold changes — you are no longer arguing about „a wrong bill“, you are asserting „an agreement was not honoured“. And failure to honour an agreement is far easier to prove than a miscalculated invoice.

If nothing works, the court remains. As said above, the regulator does not award you money; money comes from a settlement, from conciliation or from a judgment. Before deciding to litigate, weigh three things. First, the amount against cost and time: a claim over a small billing difference can prove expensive even when won. Second, your file: the written complaint, the dated replies, the regulator's case number and the commission's proposal — those four things ARE the case; without them, court reduces to „that is how I remember it“. Third, limitation: charges on bills are legally periodic payments, and under Article 111 of the Law on Obligations and Contracts claims for rent, interest and other periodic payments are extinguished by a three-year prescription.

Now the direction most readers do not expect: you are not the only one who can go to court. The company can too, and it usually chooses the fast route — the ORDER FOR PAYMENT procedure. There the court issues an order for payment without hearing you, and the paper arrives at your door. From service you have a ONE-MONTH period in which to file an objection, and under Article 414(2) of the Civil Procedure Code that period CANNOT be extended. In the ordinary case the objection does not have to be reasoned — that is, saying „I object“ is in itself a complete procedural act. If no objection is filed within the period, or it is withdrawn, the order enters into force and the court issues a writ of execution on the basis of it.

The practical translation fits into one sentence: an envelope from a court is not a piece of paper to be left in a drawer „until I have time“. If a payment order arrives concerning a bill you have been disputing for months, the single most important thing is to file the objection within the period — even a short and plain one. The objection turns this documents-only procedure into an ordinary dispute, and only then is your file genuinely read. Seek legal help on the substance; but do not lose the deadline while looking for it. The institutional and legal information in this section was collected on 24 August 2026; confirm its current state on the official and legal-text pages in the sources section.

How to verify this today

1. 1

   Identify the sector of the dispute

   Energy and water, communications and post, or a general purchase of goods or services? The competent authority changes accordingly.
2. 2

   File a written submission with the company and keep the proof

   An online form confirmation, an email record, a reference number or a postal receipt. A telephone call is not evidence.
3. 3

   Pay the undisputed part

   An objection does not suspend the duty to pay. Paying the amount you do not dispute cuts off the consequences of arrears at the start.
4. 4

   If no answer comes, move to the regulator or the consumer authority

   Attach your letter to the company, the evidence of filing and the answer if there is one. Write your request in one sentence.
5. 5

   Consider the conciliation commission

   It is a voluntary route, free for the parties, concluding within up to ninety days with a conciliation proposal. Applications go through the portal, by post, by fax or at a counter.

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