How to defend yourself with electric bill?

Question

My electric bill went from $244.00 in June to $769.00 in July. We haven't done anything different but they say we went from1240 kw used to 3360. How can that be and how do I fight it?

Answer 1

WHAT! That is COMPLETELY unacceptable!

That is the electric bill of a small business! Definitely not a house!

You need to make some calls, ask to speak to whoever is in charge, and tell them you'll happily go somewhere else with your business, and money.

Are there other providers in your area?

Answer 2

Your electric bill should have the meter readings on it, and you can check it against your meter. if you know how to read your electric meter.

if you don't here is a link that will show you how.

http://www.glps.net/meterread.htm

Of course you might want to make sure that you neighbor is not running a extension cord from your house to theirs.

Answer 3

Make sure they ACTUALLY read the meter and didn't ESTIMATE your usage.  They've done that c**p to me before!  Ask them to come out and physically re-read the meter, sometimes the meter readers enter the wrong numbers.  Meters are read backwards so it's easy to make a mistake.  Good luck!  You can also contact your state's energy commission or utility watchdog.

Answer 4

You should call the electric company so they can investigate . I think somebody might be stealing your light .Its happen 2 me

Answer 5

The first step is to always verify the reading is correct that you are being billed for. If the reading is correct than someone is stealing power from you, but more likely, you have an appliance that has gone bad in your home that is causing it to use more electricity than normal. Some common appliances that cause high electric bills when they go bad are: water heater, older refrigerators, air conditioners, freezers, washers, dryers and well pumps.

The best way to find out where the problem is occuring is to turn on all of the appliances in your home and then turn off all of your circuit breakers. The wheel on the electric meter on your house should come to a complete stop after about 30 seconds of the breakers going off. Have one person stand at the meter and one person stand at the breaker box. Turn your breakers on one at a time. When you get to the breaker with the appliance on it that is going bad, the wheel on your meter will start spinning like a top. Then determine what appliances you have on that breaker. Go to each appliance and turn it off while the breaker is still on. When you turn off the problem appliance the wheel on your meter will slow down.

I used to work Customer Service for an electric utility and this was a common problem. Your electric company will most likely not credit your bill as you did actually use the electricity. However, they may let you pay it over a series of months rather than all at once.

The bad news is that many electric companies bill a month behind when the power was actually used so you could very well have a similar bill next month.

Answer 6

That happened to me once, I called and said there was no way my usage changed. What happened was the meter reader didn't read our meter for a month and they used the reading from the last year, which was the previous tenants. In the end they didn't make us pay the extra.

However the cost per KW was supposed to go up this summer, along with the price of everything else.