The Illuminating Company

The Illuminating Company raised their rates to unfair and unethical levels. Last January (2009), I used 4938 KWH and my bill was $376. This January (2010) my usage was 3855 KWH and my bill was $472. I cut my usage by about 22% but my bill increased by nearly 20%. I understand the need to increase rates, but this seems extreme. I am literally at a point where I am unable to cover the cost of heating my home. Where is the competition or regulation to keep these price increases at a manageable level? The economic consequences of this rate increase are devastating in an economic crisis. I have not received a raise in 3 years due to the state of the economy and I cannot afford to heat my home based on these rates.

Here is the complete complaint that I sent in an email to First Energy (I just copied and paste my actual email to them in to this box). I sent to them 8 times back to back an still no response and this all pretty much sums it up :

I have called First Energy over 11 times and talked to
11 different people who work for the same company
betwween the dates of 10-16-07 thru 10-25-07 and I
still have not gotten my problem resolved so I hope
that whoever is reading this message does their job
and have a district manager or someone with true
customer service skills who can realize that the
customer is always right contact me with a resolution
this matter.My account was mysteriously charged $52.98
on the 16th of October which put my bank account in a

negative balance.

I had already paid my bill ($31.61)
on the 10th of October and the payment cleared on the
12th and I came to find out that my payment that I
really made didn't even go to my account it went to
someone else but I would have never know that had the
mysterious other charge ($52.98) prompted me to
call.So after having a First Energy rep. over talk me
and argue me down told me that my bank should replace
the money because First Energy cannot reverse payments
hmmm ... doesn't sound like she 's an asset to the
company giving false information but anyway I finally
talked to a person who said she would refund both
payments because neither mine nor the mysterious went

to my account.

Of course it took about 24 hrs but in
the mean time my bank account has accumalated a nice
amount of fees which were not my fault.So I'm almost
done I'm getting to the easy part, first of all
instead of treating the case as a refund or a reversal
of payment it was done as a wire transfer which means
and this is the funny part not only did I get charged
a $15.00 fee for getting MY MONEY back but my bank
doesn't want to cover the fees because they don't know
where the wire transfer came from because instead of
saying First Energy it says Chase Bank so of course my
bank would need some type of verification letter with
a proper letter head stating where the transfer came
from,the date it was made (10-17-07),the amount
($84.59) and then I can get on with my life.For
goodness sake what is so hard about writting a
verification letter to help a customer who was so

badly inconvenienced?

I need someone to read this and
forward it to a manger who is able to handle

situations like this.

After that you would think that someone would have contacted me but no they haven't.