Please, electric company woes!!! I need help, advice, ideas!

[jojo2324]

I need your help! There is such a knowledgeable bunch here, one of you has to know something about how we can handle this!!

A little background: Our electric bill is astronomical. It just doesn't add up. It is consistently $200-400 MORE than anybody else's we know. And most of those people have bigger homes, more appliances (chest freezer, AC), etc. It can be the same in January (when we are using heat) as in May (when we aren't, and we still aren't running fans). It can be the same when it's just us living here, or when we have friends staying for months (which we have had in the past). We have mainly new appliances (so they should be more efficient), and all halogen bulbs. I use the dishwasher every other day. I do laundry every day, but again, there were times I would only do laundry once a week and it stil is the same price.

We have shut down all the breakers. Meter stopped running, so it's not an issue of somebody siphoning power. My DH has been on the phone with our electric company since 9 am this morning. It is now 2:30. And NOTHING has been resolved. We have requested TWICE now for the meter to be examined. The first time, they couldn't do it because there was a bush nearby and it was, I quote directly here, "very prickly." We trimmed the bush. Yesterday was the second scheduled examination. They showed up. And only read the meter. Didn't bother to actually look into the problem!!!

So, DH is on the phone, trying to find a way to complain. You can only complain to the company. Apparently, there is no consumer advocacy group! LIPA is LIPA's watchdog!! (LIPA - Long Island Power Authority) How convenient is that? There is no BBB for us to contact, no impartial third party. Nada! Just LIPA. And they say, "Well, if there's a problem, we'll be more than happy to fix it." Well, why would you? It's in your favor! You're bilking us out of thousands every year - not exactly in your best interest to stop that cash flow. DH has been talking to them, trying to figure out whom he can speak with, and they've said the governor of NY. Because this is a plan that NYS put into place. ARGH.

THEN, DH was STILL on the phone talking about this, and the woman asked for his customer number:

"I don't have one." (We don't have one because we rent, therefore the # is in our landlord's name. We pay the bill every month though, even if the check's written out to our LL.)
"Well then I have no reason to be talking to you."

And then she hung up. DH calls back, asks to speak to the same lady.

"Just because I don't have a customer number doesn't mean you don't have to speak to me. It certainly doesn't mean you can hang up on me. I, as a resident of Long Island, and you, as a publicly owned company - I have the right to ask questions and get some answers. I'd like to speak to your supervisor please."
"About what?"
"To file a complaint."
"About what?"
"You."

She LAUGHED AND HUNG UP AGAIN!! Then DH called AGAIN and suddenly, phones were not being answered.

What the heck can we do here??? It seems like all we can do is call 7 On Your Side or something like that. And I doubt they'd get very far. From all that we've found, it seems like NY is the only state without some sort of utilities regulatory group. This is literally costing us hundreds upon hundreds every month. And they are of course the only company available to us. (How this is not a monopoly beats the crap out of me. There is NO other option.) And we can't exactly revert back to the year 1766 and go without power.

Is there ANY recourse??? Anything we can do? Any ideas, experience? Thank you so much, I know this is beyond boring material, but we have been battling this problem for years now and it's like running into a brick wall every time!

[papal]

Joanne, no advice for you, but i just wanted to say that over $200 sounds like an awful lot to pay for electricity... we live in a one-bedroom apartment with w/d and dw (both of which i run at LEAST once a day) On an average our electricity bill is around $40- $50. Do you know what your neighbours pay? Just so you have something to compare to. I think Seven on Your Side might be able to help you...it is worth a shot to contact them
Sorry that the electricity company are being such jerks... they deserve a kick in the pants.

[momma_boo]

One idea that came to mind was to contact your state assemblyman/woman and/or state senator. I thought of this b/c a newly elected assemblywoman opened up an office in our town (which is where she's from) and there was a statement about how her staff are available to assist residents with dealing with state agencies, etc. Unfortunately, I live in Jersey or I'd have you call her! If this doesn't work, the NY state assembly has a standing committee for Energy: http://assembly.state.ny.us/comm/
Perhaps they have some way to send in complaints?

If none of this works, you can always call 7 on your Side. If you're really desperate, you can try all the channels (I think they all have something these days, right?).

[kathsmom]

Joanne,

Oh my gosh! Their treatment of your DH on the phone is despicable and totally uncalled for! I agree with Esther. I would call someone like your assemblyman, representative, etc. They might be able to do something. And, if that doesn't work, then I would just take the electric company up on their offer - call the governor and keep calling until someone helps you! What is 7 on your side? Is that a consumer action segment on the local news? Definitely give them a call. You might also want to write a letter to the editor of your newspaper.

Have you talked to your landlord about these high rates? Does he/she have any other properties so that he could compare the usage? Maybe your home needs more insulation in the walls. We don't have any insulation in our sunroom (either in the walls or the ceiling) and it gets mighty cold in there in the winter. We have to use a space heater. Also, our doors are original to the house (30 years old) and they are not energy efficient at all. We are slowly replacing them. We are now looking into getting new energy efficient windows for the house as well. Maybe if you do these improvements to the house, the landlord would deduct it from your rent payment.

Sorry this got to be a novel. I hope that something works out for you with this situation. Please let us know what happens!

Take care!

[sweetbasil]

Do you think your landlord would share the customer # with you guys so you could use it to identify your location, or does it group all of his/her properties together?

[rorycam]

I agree with talking to your landlord and getting whatever information you need to talk to the utility company. If you are responsible for paying the bill, no matter whose name it is in, you have a right to an explanation of it, and it looks like going through the landlord is the only way. Does the actual bill come to you, or to your landlord? When we rented, we got all the bills ourselves and did not go through the landlord at all, so I am not certain how your situation works. I don't know what sort of person your landlord is, but if he will not share that information with you I would seriously consider moving, because I would rather put an extra couple hundred a month in the bank or towards a "nicer" place than I would to throwing it away like this if that is indeed the situation.

Also, I just opened up our electric bill today and it contained a form to fill out to get a free energy audit that will tell you how much each of your appliances costs to run each month, ways to cut your bill, etc. Maybe you could get that done? For what it's worth, we pay around $40/month in the winter and $80/month in the summer for a 3 bedroom 2 bath house, but we are in the midwest where things are much cheaper I'm sure. However, the figure you quote sounds way, way out of line. Also, where we live, you can call the utility company with an address and they will tell you what the average utility bill is for that house. Can you do that with a similar-sized apartment or house and see what it is for comparison?

Good luck with it, and let us know what you find out!

Rory
mama to William Holsapple, 02/29/2004

[LD92599]

I was also going to suggest contacting your area elected officials! In addition to 7 on your side..how about problem solvers on Fox...they always seem to get answers!

Good luck..sounds like you're paying ALOT more than you should be!

Laura
mom to William
3.5.2003

http://homepage.mac.com/ld14m

[caleymama]

I remember you mentioning this before and I was frustrated for you then and now this! I have no advice about how to handle the current situation, but a couple of random thoughts came to mind ...

- You didn't mention if you are seeing the actual bill each month. If you are then I guess this is a non-issue, but if you are just getting the amount from your landlord, you might want to look into making sure you're being charged the correct amount by the landlord. Obviously I have no idea if your landlord would try to take advantage of you, and I certainly hope they wouldn't, but since you didn't say for sure I thought I'd throw that out there. Assuming your landlord isn't taking advantage of you, have you asked them, as the property owner, to address this with the LIPA?

- Our power company (Niagara Mohawk in upstate NY) offers a budget plan. We signed up for it when we bought our house and we pay the same amount each month. They adjust it quarterly based on our usage so that it should just about balance out at the end of the year. If you are paying too much across the board then this won't help with that, but it's been a lifesaver for us (especially in an old house in a cold climate) not to have super high, unpredictable bills.

- I would second the suggestions to contact a local assemblyperson or representative. Even the news isn't a bad idea. That kind of treatment is despicable.

Good luck getting this sorted out!

[heidi_timms]

I have no great suggestions, but I would contact all of the local news stations and newspapers. Sometimes they have those newspaper columns like "dear editor", where people write in about city issues. I know we have that in our area. I also would refuse to pay the electric bill until your landlord provides you with an adequate breakdown of the bill. That has to be breaking some sort of renter's rights.

~Heidi
Mom to Kailey Ashlin
4/27/03

[redhookmom]

When we had Niagara Mohawk we had a similiar problem and someone came to our house and ran around our house with some sort of meter to figure out what the problem was. When DH gets home I will ask him how he made that happen.

[miki]

Joanne,

Here is a link to the state agency that can help you with complaints against LIPA: http://tinyurl.com/yq3kn . There is a form you can submit online and a description of the complaint process. And there is a description of the complaint process that is part of NYS law here: http://tinyurl.com/32gqq .

[jubilee]

I only wanted to suggest you tape record your phone calls with the power company from now on. That "customer service" person should be SHOT!

[ddmarsh]

Joanne - It appears that there is in fact a body that deals with oversight of public utilties. If you go to this site:
http://www.bpu.state.nj.us/home/home.shtml you'll see on the left side a link to a page for a Ratepayer advocate and from there you can click specifically on electricity or energy (I forget which it said). It looks like there are staff attorneys that you are able to contact from there. If you can't find the links LMK and I will look it up again.

HTH -

[bnme]

Joanne-I can relate. I have my own gripes with LIPA, though nothing as severe and ridiculous as your case! OMG

I just thought I'd mention that in the past I have seen a case like this on one of the "7 On Your Side" or "Ask Asa" types of shows -I'm not sure if it was LIPA or Coned (or whatever the name of the city power company is). The person's bill was in the 1000s and they were refusing to check into it and in the end it was a faulty meter or billing problem, or something that was not even her fault/doing. It may be a way to go if all else fails, though I wonder how many requests they get and how long the follow up, etc is.

Did you try writing a letter to the president of the company or something? Though it could takes ions to even get a response from something like that. Is there an independant electrician you can get to do some type of inspection that checks your actual usage -like if you had some type of haywire appliance sucking in huge amounts of electricity??

FWIW, my most recent LIPA bill was $270 for a 2 month period for 1751 of Kilowatt usage (whatever that means). I remember the bill used to show how much you used compared to the average customer, but I can't find that any more.

Good Luck!

[jojo2324]

Thank you everyone, so much. Right now we are waiting for a call from LIPA to schedule another exam of the meter. They want to schedule when we are here (we were out of town on Monday when they came last time), so they can walk through the house and try to find problem areas. Over the phone, one of the people did ask estimates on number of wash loads, energy levels of different appliances, etc, and came up with an estimated price of our monthly electric bill. It's about $40 below what we are paying, and still about $100 more than anybody else we know.

Funny thing is, on the phone yesterday, one of the dozens of people DH spoke to said, "Well, you sound very negative sir. If there is a problem, we'll be more than happy to fix it." To which DH said, "You've now had TWO opportunities to be helpful. To me, it seems like you're dodging the problem."

We are going to see what happens at this next meter check. This is our biggest problem: we are less likely to believe LIPA when they say there is no problem. Does that make sense? What benefit is it to them to admit there is a problem on their end? That's all we're looking for, somebody NOT associated with LIPA to say there is or is not a problem. LIPA doesn't seem to understand our concern over this.

As for the landlord, we have HIS number. But it's in his name. In theory, they should not speak to a person who *isn't* the specific number holder. Make sense? Yesterday, DH just didn't want to deal with them saying, You're not so and so, we can't speak to you. Even though she ended up not speaking to him anyway. Out landlord has actually been very helpful about this. But he gets the bill every month (and we do get a copy, so he is not ripping us off), pays it, and we reimburse him. Our thinking is he has listed this rental property as income (obviously), and is telling whomever that utilities are included, even though they are not. That adds padding to his deductions. He has also astutely noted that "Your electric bill doesn't seem much different from other tenants I've had there." Well, duh. If there is a problem with the METER, it would affect all of your tenants.

Also, speaking to LIPA yesterday, they said that at one point the average monthly bill was $150. (Before we moved in.) Then it suddenly shot up to $300. So they're guessing we're losing power somewhere along the line. But why didn't they investigate then? And, why aren't the Feds busting down our door? I have always heard that a dramatic increase in energy use usually leads cops to believe you've got a narcotic greenhouse, if you know what I mean. (Ha!! I kill bonsai trees, so I'm definitely not in the growing greenery line of work. ;))

As for the crazy amount we pay, that's just part and parcel of living where we do. Long Island is notorious for its exorbitant electric rates. (And everything else, honestly.) But we are paying above and beyond the already exorbitant price. And Deb, that link looks great - but it's NJ based. We are in NY. It really doesn't seem like there is anything of that sort in NY.

So, I guess we'll see what happens with the next check. If LIPA concludes that there is nothing wrong, we'll start looking into one of the local news channels consumer advocate segments and our local representative. Thanks everyone again, and I'm sorry this got so long. Who knew electricity could leave us so...frustrated! :p

[jojo2324]

Donna, where are you on Long Island? There are a few of us here. (I'm in East Hampton.)

As far as our bill goes, it used to say "actual reading" and "estimated use" or something like that. They would estimate what we would use in one month, then with the actual reading adjust it so they could charge us accordingly. NOW it says actual reading only (but twice - we get billed every other month).

What you paid over the course of two months is about half what we have to pay. And that holds true for EVERYBODY we have spoken to. I mean, if a dozen people polled are ALL paying less than we are, wouldn't that seem to indicate we're paying too much?!?!

What really started this ball rolling was our last bill. It was for $143 for two months. Hallelujah!!! That we could handle, and that seems to be what everybody is paying around us. So it showed us that something was in fact wrong all along, if suddenly we could receive a normal bill. But speaking to the landlord yesterday, he said our new bill is for $800. To make up for how little it was before. Again, estimate vs. actual. There is just no way we went from using that little to that much, no possible way! I mean, the amount of money we send to these folks could cover our car insurance.

Okay, I'm getting angry all over again! x(

But Donna, definitely if you are on Long Island, maybe we can meet up!! :)

[ddmarsh]

Joanne there are undoubtedly some procedural rights afforded to you under the NJ statutes (there is a section of the code entitled Public Utilities but the link to the content was not working) or state regs, etc. and the link that I gave you above will likely provide you with information on that. Just because a few lackys at the company says that they are the ones to go through with complaints and that they will take care of it does not make it so! :)

[etwahl]

hey joanne, have no advice, but i just wanted to say we also have ridiculous bills. we were told when we moved here they'd be between $150-$200 and this past winter they were $400. and our neighbors had the same thing. to me that is absolutely insane. that's PER MONTH. i mean who can afford these prices? it's not like we do ALL that much. now it has me wanting to figure why WE pay so dang much. jeez i'm ticked off too now.

Tammy,
Mom to Lauren Genevieve
03/12/2003
www.evantammy.com

[aliceinwonderland]

If you're talking gas+electricity, $400, sad to say, is NOT unusual.

I live in MA, and, though our electric bill is TINY (less than $30, but I think that's because we don't pay for the washer and dryer, the landlord does), our GAS bill for our tiny 2 bedroom appartment, is around 200 in the winter. THis considering that there's NOONE HOME during the day, therefore the heat is OFF.

One month, during our crazy New England winter, the gas bill nearly tripled. I'm still trying to have that month investigated, but no luck so far.

eri and the bean, due April 19 :)

[starrynight]

I would try the news it might get you somewhere, probably not far but somewhere is a start. Also are you sure the BBB won't take your complaint? That blows and certainly sounds like the meter isn't working correctly. I hope you get it resolved.

And as for the customer service rep, I would report her next time you get someone on the phone or do it in writing. If you don't know her name just write down the time and date you called they should be able to figure out who it was.

[NEVE and TRISTAN]

I might be wrong but your bill I think would be high if you turn off your heat etc.. during the day just because no one is home. I think to revamp up and get warm again upon your arrival takes more power than to just keep it at a medium level. I might be wrong...but this is the way I have thought. For instance just changing the temp a degree evidently makes a huge difference, so if you turn it off or down or up and then ask it 8 hours later to compensate for that you are having to compensate a whole lotta degrees...

You might want to do a trial basis and see what it shows...

Neve
http://home.nc.rr.com/ourbabytristan
AKA "mama2be"-forgot password
and Baby Boy Tristan born @UNC
Feb 25, 2003
Brother to 3 pups "gees" and 2 kitties

[aliceinwonderland]

My DH says that too, and it makes sense...But the apartment is so small, and the people upstairs keep their heat on longer I think, because the temperature doesn't drop all the way to the bottom...we basically just have the heat really ON for a couple of hours during the whole day, if that.

[loewymartin]

Joanne,

I'm going to send your note to my dad if that's ok. He just retired from ConEd (a subsidiary actually) and there are regulations in NY. My dad might have some info, or might be able to give me a contact. I'll let you know.

Michelle - Mom to Alia born 5/16/02

[jojo2324]

Michelle, that's so great!! Thank you! I emailed a person on the NJ regulatory board, but have not heard back from her yet. I really appreciate any insight he may have!

[todzwife]

I don't have time to read everyone elses responses, but does your landlord give you a bill or does he just tell you how much it is? How much do you trust your landlord? Have you seen the bill? Just a thought...