General Music Chat

At this point, I'm just venting...

Back in december, I got a fairly HUGE bill. It had been cold, we have electric heat, but we live in a small 2br apartment, and we don't use any crazy electric-sucking devices like baseboard heaters or portable heaters, etc.. Just a pretty normal setup. We did replace all lights with cfc bulbs, and have from spring last year thru fall used a consistent average of about 1500KWh a month, resulting in roughly $200 bills. It's PECO, so it's expensive, yes. My wife also was unemployed, so she was home all day during that time. Also note that we ran the AC (central AC) full tilt all summer long, and still stayed well under 2000KWh per month.

So back to December..
We had a few financial hurdles hit us, and I couldn't pay the (normal) bill that was due at the beginning of the month. So I called them and asked for a payment plan. They were HAPPY to help, told me they would take the ($200) bill and split it up over the next 6 months. It will be added to my next bill, no problemo.

So I get the next bill later in the month, and that was the huge one mentioned at the beginning of this post. It was well over $400. I assumed that maybe we just used way too much hot water, heat, etc..

4 days after getting that bill, I get a 10-day shut-off notice, saying that since I have a problem paying my bills, that they will require a $740 deposit, due in full within the 10 days or my power will be shut off.

I call them and they say tough crap, that's how it is. They would be HAPPY to make an arrangement, though. Pay $480 that day, then another $280 on the first of the next month, and our power won't be shut off. They said they would bill me the remainder. Great.

So I made those payments, and then hear nothing for almost a month. I'm thinking I should call them and see what's going on.. check the mail.. it's a bill, for $1500+, claiming my usage for Jan was over 4000Kwh, and Feb was almost 6000Kwh. Ok. Something is seriously going on here. I call maintenance and ask them to come out and check my water heater. They do, there's nothing wrong with it. We go to the electric room and find my meter. It's a digital meter, they all are, and notably hot to the touch. All the other meters are cold. I had my bill in hand (was showing it to maintenance guy), and checked the meter reading.. it showed that I had racked up yet another 2000+ KWh since the last meter reading (8 days before)!! WTF!! The maintenance guy said there's something seriously wrong with the meter. Yeah, no kidding.

So I call PECO. Talk to billing and they send me to CS. CS tells me that they will send someone out, in TWO WEEKS. Next day the shut-off notice arrives, they want another $600 in ten days, because my balance is so high, and my payment history is bad. argh. Call them back, talk to billing, who agrees to extend the due date until the day after the service call. Not a day later. I plead with them that IF the meter is bad, that gives them no time to get the report from the technician and account for 3 months of unjust bills. They said it's not their problem, and to call CS.

So I call CS. They say it's not their problem, talk to billing. ARGH!

So I go to the PUC website and file a complaint. Took the time to explain exactly what was going on. My biggest concern and fear is that the meter is digital. I'm a PC guy. We had 3 "bad" PC's last year, where one would just freeze up randomly, and the other two would reboot randomly. Sometimes it would happen a couple times a day, other times, only a couple of times a month. I ran every test known to mankind on them and could not find a single thing wrong. And that's just it- digital products can be extremely flaky and show absolutely no problem diagnostically. I explain this to CS, they said that their impression is that it is "highly unlikely" that their meter is the issue and refuse to intervene (put a hold on) with the billing.

So today, the PUC responded to my complaint, with a form letter...

The Public Utility Commission received an email from you regarding your utility service with PECO ENERGY. In the complaint you stated that you felt some recent bills were too high. The amount you are billed by PECO ENERGY is based on a meter reading. If you question the accuracy of your meter, you can ask PECO ENERGY to test the meter. PECO ENERGY may charge a small fee to test the meter. If the meter test proves it is inaccurate, PECO ENERGY should refund the meter test fee and adjust your bill accordingly. If your bills are based on actual meter readings, and your meter is accurate, the PUC cannot make the company adjust your bills because you feel they are too high.

No, I never stated that I FELT the bills were too high, the bills are HIGHER THAN MY RENT YOU FREEKING IDIOT. Notice how they say what peco "SHOULD" do, not what they are REQUIRED to do. I sense this is going to get worse before it gets better... ARGH.

FU PUC, and FU PECO.

maybe you could convert to wood-burning heat.?.pot belly stoves are not that high and a little carpentry skills could get your flue through the ceiling or wall?...just sayin

$200 a month regular electric bills? Man, you were getting screwed before they really screwed you! By chance is your water heater electric and hooked up to your meter?
Obviously you've got to take care of this problem first, but I'd be looking at moving as soon as possible.

I don't blame you one bit. You have every right to be irate at the lack of responsibility shown by Peco. The lack of service vs. the amount of power that peco and other utilities possess to charge for services not rendered is incredible! O computers will make everything accurate, cheaper, better and easier they said. That is until they get hacked or solar flared or what ever kind of simplistic BS that can toast the whole system and throw the US back into the stone age.

But I guess the Conservatives are makin money off of that fear too!

There is just no humanity with all these machines just a paid up black mark or a you owe red mark. In the end we are all just numbers now and corporations will never be held responsible for computer glitches.

This is fixable Kramer. Something is causing your bills to go haywire. Call billing, ask to speak to a billing supervisor and calmly, respectfully explain to them that you are not using any more electricity than last year but bills are skyrocketing and you don't know why. Ask them to allow you to pay the last years equivalent monthly amount until this is resolved without a looming shutoff. Seven days is plenty of time.

The PUC is a useless govt. bureaucracy. They spend most of their waking hours finding ways to still get paid without actually serving anyone... as their response clearly demonstrates.

Now find the problem:
Either Edison, building maintenance, or an electrician need to do some simple troubleshooting pronto. I would use an amp clamp meter and measure amps on the line (street) side of the meter, then on the load side of the meter. Note down any difference. If the difference is huge, the meter is bad (on Edison). If no difference, measure the amps from the load side to the breaker panel, and then measure the load on each circuit in the panel and write it all down.

Somewhere in this process you will find a really big amperage draw. If it is on one of your circuits, see what is on the circuit. Bingo! Problem found. It is a simple process of elimination that will take 30 minutes time. Either you have a bad meter, bad/shorted home wiring, failed appliance, or one of your neighbors is growing a pot farm in their attic and they forgot to tell you they borrowed a little juice to run their heat lamps.

If it is shorted home wiring the bill is on your landlord. If it is a failed refrigerator (or your pot farm) the bill is on you. Finding and fixing the problem will restore your sanity and dignity. Ranting about being taken advantage of by "the Man" will only result in it getting really cold, really fast.

http://www.amazon.com/AC-Amp-Clamp-Mete ... B004YKSRLQ



Good luck!

could just be a faulty smart meter?..

Kramer

I had a female employee, a lady with two handicapped kids and a wooden leg for gosh sake, and the same thing happened to her.

But this is Georgia - I called Public utilities commission and they sorted it out mucho pronto. The power company actually called me and asked me not to do sh*t like that - said they'd have been glad to handle it for me.

For me, perhaps. But not for her!

Good luck with that.

Talbot

I don't have the tools to measure that stuff, nor the access to the wires/grid. Keep in mind that this is a small apartment unit in a 12-unit building.

I did follow up and call the PUC again, this time asked for a supervisor (more like demanded.. explained later). After some more frustration, and a small confrontation with the supervisor, I finally got my point across that the problem is demonstrable on the bill. You can clearly see last years usage is consistent thorughout the year, until december, jan, feb, where the graph bars clearly double in height from month to month to month.

I had to force them to agree that going from 1500KWh to 6000KWh is not normal.. Once we came to that understanding, they finally agreed to force PECO to pull the meter, rather than just run a diagnostic on it, and have it tested in a test facility, and if it is deemed faulty, they will assist with reimbursement. They also agreed (again, after arguing over it) to force a hold on my account charges until this is resolved.

I'm glad that I got some relief on this, but at the same time, I'm still a bit perturbed that I had to deal with that level of agony, frustration, stress, and literally had to forcefully twist the PUC's arm to listen to common sense and reason when it came to my case.

The first poor soul I got on the phone tried to reason with me by reading their original email response verbatim.. as if I was having trouble comprehending that rubbish.. to which my reaction was so harsh, I think her grandkids felt a burning sensation for the few moments. I hate having to be "that guy" on the phone, but they gave me no other alternatives.

Oh well- thanks for all the replies. I hate what capitalism has made of this country.

Good that you managed to keep the lights on. I suspect that the meter is fine and this ain't over yet.

oh ok, guess your landlord would not appreciate installing a pot belly wood stove afterall.. my sincerest apologies..

does anybody burn firewood for heat other than Ozark hillbillies? maybe it is not "green" enough.. maybe not hip and groovy to use firewood but boy does it beat the price of propane at $2.50 a gallon..

does anybody burn firewood for heat other than Ozark hillbillies? maybe it is not "green" enough.. maybe not hip and groovy to use firewood but boy does it beat the price of propane at $2.50 a gallon..

I don't have any issues with burning firewood, trees ARE a renewable energy source, so long as we as a society replant what we use! Up here people are charging around $350-400 per cord.. it's extremely expensive for no good reason.

does anybody burn firewood for heat other than Ozark hillbillies? maybe it is not "green" enough.. maybe not hip and groovy to use firewood but boy does it beat the price of propane at $2.50 a gallon..

I don't have any issues with burning firewood, trees ARE a renewable energy source, so long as we as a society replant what we use! Up here people are charging around $350-400 per cord.. it's extremely expensive for no good reason.

kramer, did not realize firewood was so expensive in Pa. ... now I feel like Kramer and Newman figuring out if they could be profitable running pop bottles to Michigan from New york City where there was a nice deposit paid out..they used a post office van to do it.. except I would be running some firewood out there to Pa. from Missouri..? I'm joking!..but there are firewood dealers that make "runs" from the timberlands of Missouri to the prairie grasslands of Dallas Texas cause firewood brings a fortune there too.. oh shoot I did not mean to hijack your thread...sincerest apologies..

Keith, I am 1.5 hours from you but I can give you all the free firewood you want if it helps.

At this point, I'm just venting...

Back in december, I got a fairly HUGE bill. It had been cold, we have electric heat, but we live in a small 2br apartment, and we don't use any crazy electric-sucking devices like baseboard heaters or portable heaters, etc.. Just a pretty normal setup. We did replace all lights with cfc bulbs, and have from spring last year thru fall used a consistent average of about 1500KWh a month, resulting in roughly $200 bills. It's PECO, so it's expensive, yes. My wife also was unemployed, so she was home all day during that time. Also note that we ran the AC (central AC) full tilt all summer long, and still stayed well under 2000KWh per month.

So back to December..
We had a few financial hurdles hit us, and I couldn't pay the (normal) bill that was due at the beginning of the month. So I called them and asked for a payment plan. They were HAPPY to help, told me they would take the ($200) bill and split it up over the next 6 months. It will be added to my next bill, no problemo.

So I get the next bill later in the month, and that was the huge one mentioned at the beginning of this post. It was well over $400. I assumed that maybe we just used way too much hot water, heat, etc..

4 days after getting that bill, I get a 10-day shut-off notice, saying that since I have a problem paying my bills, that they will require a $740 deposit, due in full within the 10 days or my power will be shut off.

I call them and they say tough crap, that's how it is. They would be HAPPY to make an arrangement, though. Pay $480 that day, then another $280 on the first of the next month, and our power won't be shut off. They said they would bill me the remainder. Great.

So I made those payments, and then hear nothing for almost a month. I'm thinking I should call them and see what's going on.. check the mail.. it's a bill, for $1500+, claiming my usage for Jan was over 4000Kwh, and Feb was almost 6000Kwh. Ok. Something is seriously going on here. I call maintenance and ask them to come out and check my water heater. They do, there's nothing wrong with it. We go to the electric room and find my meter. It's a digital meter, they all are, and notably hot to the touch. All the other meters are cold. I had my bill in hand (was showing it to maintenance guy), and checked the meter reading.. it showed that I had racked up yet another 2000+ KWh since the last meter reading (8 days before)!! WTF!! The maintenance guy said there's something seriously wrong with the meter. Yeah, no kidding.

So I call PECO. Talk to billing and they send me to CS. CS tells me that they will send someone out, in TWO WEEKS. Next day the shut-off notice arrives, they want another $600 in ten days, because my balance is so high, and my payment history is bad. argh. Call them back, talk to billing, who agrees to extend the due date until the day after the service call. Not a day later. I plead with them that IF the meter is bad, that gives them no time to get the report from the technician and account for 3 months of unjust bills. They said it's not their problem, and to call CS.

So I call CS. They say it's not their problem, talk to billing. ARGH!

So I go to the PUC website and file a complaint. Took the time to explain exactly what was going on. My biggest concern and fear is that the meter is digital. I'm a PC guy. We had 3 "bad" PC's last year, where one would just freeze up randomly, and the other two would reboot randomly. Sometimes it would happen a couple times a day, other times, only a couple of times a month. I ran every test known to mankind on them and could not find a single thing wrong. And that's just it- digital products can be extremely flaky and show absolutely no problem diagnostically. I explain this to CS, they said that their impression is that it is "highly unlikely" that their meter is the issue and refuse to intervene (put a hold on) with the billing.

So today, the PUC responded to my complaint, with a form letter...

The Public Utility Commission received an email from you regarding your utility service with PECO ENERGY. In the complaint you stated that you felt some recent bills were too high. The amount you are billed by PECO ENERGY is based on a meter reading. If you question the accuracy of your meter, you can ask PECO ENERGY to test the meter. PECO ENERGY may charge a small fee to test the meter. If the meter test proves it is inaccurate, PECO ENERGY should refund the meter test fee and adjust your bill accordingly. If your bills are based on actual meter readings, and your meter is accurate, the PUC cannot make the company adjust your bills because you feel they are too high.

No, I never stated that I FELT the bills were too high, the bills are HIGHER THAN MY RENT YOU FREEKING IDIOT. Notice how they say what peco "SHOULD" do, not what they are REQUIRED to do. I sense this is going to get worse before it gets better... ARGH.

FU PUC, and FU PECO.

Kramer,

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ocs/liheap/

They can help.

Also, Have that meter tested. Have your neighbors consider the same... If yo sense a pattern, you might qualify to file a real class action suit against PECO. Talk to the news outlets also.