J-HALEY wrote:Grant, you pay based on killowatt hourly usage. The T.U.C. (Texas Utility Commision) has basically sold us up a river! The big power companies have decided to change out our perfectly good meters with the new Digital meters. You have NO choice. people here are suing over it. One friend of mine is in a wheelchair and permantly disabled. He set out every day waiting for the company to TRY and change his meter LOL! Any way you have no choice but to BUY a new meter. The power company sold the P.U.C. on the idea because they are supposedly more accurate (wink wink) and the power company can monitor your usage round the clock, turn off power, turn on power, monitor outages. Yeah right? They are now implenting a program where during peak usage hrs the elec. cost more. This way they can SCREW the public out of more money.
This is BAD NEWS for grow houses. Those guys use a humongous amount of elect. and it alerts the police. The other day some dumbass was electrocuted trying to jack leg electric by bi-passing a meter!
Sounds similar to what they've done up here.. They charge individually per KWh, which I understand- to each what he uses.. Then they announced electricity "Choice" which turned out to be a HUGE payday for the major providers- you sign up for a cheaper service and the main provider doubles your transmission and distribution charges.. ultimately resulting in your bill going UP by 1/3 to 1/2.. and you are STUCK with it until the end of the contract period (1-2 years, works like cellphone contracts) OH YEAH, they charge separately for transmission and distribution.. WTF? Aren't they the same thing?? And that's on top of the KWh charges, usually each charge roughly equals the KWh charge.. so you use $100 worth of KWh, your bill is $300 + 10,000 vague service charges and taxes, so make it $400.
It's a scam, and the PUC just keeps passing new "regulations" that basically give the power companies more power to screw us out of money.
Just two months ago, I was struggling to pay my bill, called PECO, asked for an "arrangement" where I take my current bill and spread the balance out over the next 4 bills. They were glad to do it, real nice and all.
Then I got a 10-day shut off notice- to make a $450 deposit within 10 days for the reason of "late payment" .. the amount I spread out over the 4 next bills was only $320something!!!! So .. they basically decided that since I'm struggling to pay my $320 bill, that I should be extorted to pay $450 because I had the audacity to ask for some leeway.
I wish for the most evil things to happen to this company, things that I'm afraid to type in public for fear that the guv would label me a turrist.