Beware, your electric bill may kill you

This month, when I opened my electric bill from Dynowatt, I almost fell off my chair, it was $658.00 for a 2100-square-foot home! I compared this month's consumption to that of the last two years and there was ...

[Jessica]

I had a big suprise this month as well. My Electric bill jumped from $170.00 last month to over $400.00 this month. I have Co-Serve. We keep our A/C at 80 during the day and 78 at night. We have done this the last couple months so nothing has changed. June has always been an average consumption month for us and we have lived in our home 8 years. We do not have a choice in our area. We must use Co-Serve. Co Serve charges a fee on your bill every month. They told me is was the cost to turn gas in to electric. My fee was $180.00. My actual bill was only $240. Good luck becuase I think we are all at the electric companies mercy!

[pragmatist]

Jessica wrote:

I had a big suprise this month as well. My Electric bill jumped from $170.00 last month to over $400.00 this month. I have Co-Serve. We keep our A/C at 80 during the day and 78 at night. We have done this the last couple months so nothing has changed. June has always been an average consumption month for us and we have lived in our home 8 years. We do not have a choice in our area. We must use Co-Serve. Co Serve charges a fee on your bill every month. They told me is was the cost to turn gas in to electric. My fee was $180.00. My actual bill was only $240. Good luck becuase I think we are all at the electric companies mercy!

I have long marveled at the "replacement fee" on the utility bills.

Theoretically, it is the differential between the cost of fuel when it was purchased and today's cost to replace it. However, if you'll notice, we also pay a fuel fee as well, for the fuel itself.

So, aren't we paying for it twice?

[notsohappywithco serv]

Well, our bill for last month was $275 and the bill we got this past Monday was for $715. We examined last month's bill a little more closely and on it is stamped "estimated bill"...apparantly, Coserv just grossly underestimated how much we used last month without sending out a meter reader and when they actually read the meter for the current bill, they made up the difference with this big-A$$ bill. Perhaps they're trying to save labor costs by estimating bills periodically. Regardless, the bill came as a huge shock to my wife and I.

[Gift from Coserv]

We recently moved to the area and were very surprised when we opened our first bill from Coserv and it read $700.00 even..how odd considering we were on a family vacation for two weeks of the billing cycle to which we turned the AC off.
I told them its ridiculous, and asked for a meter audit two weeks ago. Still haven't seen anyone to the house to do this. If they want my money..they're going to audit the meter and find out what the hell could drive usage this high in a house which occupied for only 2 weeks of the billing cycle.

[Greg]

I had a similar issue with a high bill last month - $515. And I was doing lots of things to conserve energy. Well, it turned out my contact had expired and they had shifted by rate to a month-month plan with a rate of 23 cents per kwh. So I called them and they fixed it and credit my account causing the bill to drop to around $300.