The PV installation company commissioned by the property management company on behalf of the COA submitted the subsidy application on behalf of its customer and ticked "Company" in the "Company" or "Natural person" selection options, as it seemed plausible that a COA could not be a natural person. Furthermore, when the data was processed by the funding agency, it was not the WEG but the Hausverwaltungs-GmbH that was noted as the applicant. "In this case, the community of homeowners actually purchased the PV system from the reserves and therefore also counts as a consumer according to the Supreme Court ruling," explains Ombudswoman Elisabeth Schwetz.
The Austrian Ombudsman Board therefore agreed with the complainants' view that the online form for the subsidy application was inadequate, as it only offered the options "natural person" and "company". The BMK conceded that an input error had occurred during the data processing of the subsidy application, in that the correct name of the WEG had been swapped for the company name of the property management company. "Thanks to the intervention of the Austrian Ombudsman Board, the matter was finally clarified and brought to a positive conclusion. The WEG received the promised subsidy amount," said Ombudswoman Schwetz.
Photo (c) Wikimedia Commons Enerix-knuth