Is Gexa Energy Price Gouging?

Posted on April 1, 2009
Filed Under Economy | 1 Comment

Decide for yourself after reading this. It started when I opened the monthly electric bill and found it to be over $600. This was about twice the largest bill ever, so it got my attention. Upon investigation I noticed usage was up – no surprise as it had been cold in December, but the real culprit was the rate which had risen to over 20 cents per kWh.

Electric Utilities Looking back over the years bills, I saw the rate had been slowly climbing higher from a starting point of under 10 cents per kWh. One or two cents a month without me really noticing. I had noticed bills that seemed a bit higher, but never enough to make me dig out the old statements and figure out what was happening.

So okay, my fault for not paying attention. Then I call Gexa Energy customer service to find out what’s going on, and the agent says I’m on a variable rate plan. I say I don’t really care, and that all I’ve ever been interested in is finding the cheapest possible rate – I mean come on, it’s a commodity – not like electricity has flavors or something.

Agent replies sure, he can give me an 11 cent rate if I agree to 6 months of service. Hmmmm, hard choice, 20 cents or 11 cents, since the 6 months contract is basically irrelevant to get that savings – besides which it’s breakable if I move anyway. (I’m actually wondering why I should have to call to request this – guess they aren’t really looking out for me huh?)

So I say sure, sign me up. Agent says okay but it won’t show right away on statement, may be the next months. Fine, I figure it’ll be retro whenever it catches up, so no big deal.

Now 30 days later, January bill, and the rate is still unchanged. I call up and agent says they said it won’t be there until following months bill. Now I’m suspicious, and ask the $64 question – will that bill be adjusted to reflect the change to my rate plan from a month ago? Answer was not just no, but that I would have to pay the current month at that higher rate also.

It seems Gexa Energy is incapable of making a rate change in less than 60 days. Gee, I wonder how they set up a new customer……..

So yes, I’m steamed, and start the escalation process with the agent to see if I can get far enough up the food chain in the Gexa call center to actually find someone who can make a thoughtful decision rather than just working from a script. I got about 4 levels up – well maybe – they probably just passed me off as a lateral handoff on a couple of those.

Anyway, got to some guy who said they had to review the transcript and see if I was properly informed how long it would take to change rate. I said I didn’t care, that wasn’t the point. Regardless of what doubletalk the agent used, I’d still assumed that my actual billing rate would be changed pretty quick, even if it took a while to be reflected in the billing.

So I get no further with this guy and have to wait a couple days for the call back. He did call back and proceeded to tell me I was in fact properly informed and have no recourse. I tried to explain that he was missing the point, but he was pretty much clueless, so I told him he’d done everything according to the book to cover the collective Gexa corporate backside. He didn’t really seem to grasp that point either, at which point I said goodbye.

So here’s the bottom line. I’m not irritated with anyone but myself for not noticing my electric rate going up. I am very irritated with Gexa for waiting 2 months to reduce it to the new rate they agreed to. What they effectively did, was force me to pay twice as much for electricity as I should have.

One would think a corporation like Gexa Energy, that according to their advertising, is interested in the welfare of their customers, would not do something so underhanded – especially in the current economic environment where folks are struggling to make ends meet. Yet it would appear they aren’t really all that caring after all.

If you have service with Gexa – watch out for yourself. There is no reason for a 2x rate variance – just makes no sense. I could see a penny or two for no service contract, but beyond that seems absurd. And then for that extra two months of waiting, Gexa forced me to pay over $500 extra for electricity – just because they wouldn’t change their records? Just not right!

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1 Comment so far

Rich Quinn April 1, 2009 9:42 pm

Take a couple of minutes and go to http://www.gexa-gouges.com and you will see this is standard operating proceedure for Gexa. They simply do whatever it takes to trap, trick, move, or otherwise stall you on high high high rates. Then they move like lard in December to fix the problem. Everyone is trained in double speak and delay speak. Note also that the Chief Financial Officer is a fella by the name of Jeff Harbert – ex high level Enron exec. Enron 2? I think at least they learn how to gouge customers on energy from Enron. Join us in a class action suit. See the site above. Rich

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Is Gexa Energy Price Gouging?

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