Reliant Energy
Charging cancelling fee when I never signed up for a contract

I signed up with Reliant Energy around July on a month-to-month plan. I didn't want to signup for a contract plan, since I wanted to sell the house and I had put my house in the market.
Due to the market conditions, the house has not been sold, so I continue to stay in the house.in October I signed up with reliant to view my account online.in their website I could my account profile and my usage history, etc. No where in that website could I see that I had a contract with them, nor were the contract expiration dates listed.

In November I was offered a better rate by another electric provider. So I wanted to signup with them. Since, I never signed a contract and didn't see one online, I decided to switch.in my final bill, reliant charged me the cancellation fee of 100$. When I called Customer service, they say I enrolled in the contract online on December 20th and it would expire on December 20th.

As I said earlier, I activated Reliant Online account only in October so how could I have enrolled in the contract 10 months before that? Anyway, If I was aware of the contract expiry on Dec 20th why would I quit a month earlier just to pay them the 100$. Doesn't make sense.

I think somebody at Reliant (May be the IT guys), messed up bigtime by enrolling some accounts automatically in to a contract without bothering about the impact to the customers.

Company: Reliant Energy
Country: USA
State: Texas
City: Houston
Address: P.O. Box 3765
Phone: 8662227100

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