Utilities - what now?

[Hyperion]

[Hyperion]

[Winchester]

[lil bit]

Next time, ask the company to confirm in writing they have received your notice to terminate the contract.

It'll save you a lot of bother.

[Hyperion]

The thing is I did get a reply.

I said to them: To whom it may concern, My contract is expiring at the end of this month and I would just like to clarify that I wish to NOT RENEW. I would also like my security forward to the following address: XXX.

To which I received the response: Thank you for contacting Cirro Energy. Once your account automatically closes and the final bill generates, please call customer service e@ 1-800-692-4776 to request your refund, the deposit will take care of your final bill if you do not pay it.

What they're doing has to be illegal. Now I have to go through a month or two of head-aches, because I'm sure the collection agency will put up a fight, too.

[Professor]

In these types of cases, I typically forget about fighting the actual issue. Yeah, you can go through the steps and get it resolved, but it could take a while and will be aggrivating. And, in the end, you end up getting exactly what you would have gotten in the first place. In other words, you waste a lot of time and effort.

So, ignore the actual issue, and go after bigger fish. File a complaint with the regulatory authority overseeing the untility. Then, write a letter to the utility telling them you did that. Also send a letter to your elected official, and tell the company about that, too. Follow-up with the regulatory authority to request a face-to-face meeting. Or, if your state is in session right now, find out when a member of that panel will be at the Capitol (their secretaries will usually tell you), and then go lobby them in person.

Make sure that the company knows you're doing all this. And, make sure they know that you're not just worried about your measley little bill, but that you are accusing them of institutionalized wrongdoing.

In other words, make it worth their while to make you go away. And then keep goinig and shove it up their a$$.

I did that to Allstate once, because we were bickering over about $2000 worth of repairs to my car (and Allstate was MY insurance company). They didn't want to play ball, so I took it to the Department of Insurance. The DOI ended up discovering about 5 years of improper damgaes calculations (they weren't factoring in labor when calcualting the cost of repairs). They had to refund thousands of people money, plus pay significant administrative fines.

Now, when I call Allstate about something, they listen.

[The Dharma Bum]

I got a check for $500 from another insurer for something like that once. Some kind of improper billing or something.

I salute your efforts!