I would like everyone to know what happened to us and what could very well happen to you if you live in PA, MD, WV, or VA, and have Allegheny Energy as the parent company to your subsidiary electric company.
We have Allegheny Power which is the local PA company, we have paid our bills mostly ontime. We have paid a few late with this tough economic time for us all, but had never been shut off, we gave them a security deposit of $350 in November. We knew we were late for this month but had not gotten a shut off notice, we had paid the bill online on their company website, for $100 over the past due amount, on Wednesday night. We come home about 11 PM Friday and there is a shut off notice on the door saying we owed $261 and the power had been off since 11:15 AM. We immediately called the company and got an answering service, we were told to call back at 7 am and they would send someone out to fix it. We went to the store got lots of ice to try and save our food (of course we had stopped at the grocery store on the way home).
At 7 am Saturday we call back and are told that they did not have access to the system and we would not have our power on until Monday. I asked them "What if we had someone on oxygen?" They said we would have to find other arangements... WTF? (We did not, but I wanted to know). They said no one worked on the weekends that could turn our power back on. How can you turn somones power off on a Friday when you don't have anyone to turn it back on for 3 days? After my boyfriend and I calling back several times that morning and getting the same response, we both lost it, I started crying and wondered how could someone do this to us? Then we went into survival mode. We called around and rented a generator, which gave us enough power for the refrigerator, some lights, the tv, computer and microwave. We brought up the grill to cook food and luckily had an electric heater since is got quite cold at night. We looked online and found out that the payment had gone through our bank acct. On Friday. (I'm going to call the bank to find out exactly what time).
We made it through the weekend despite having limited power and NO hot water, we call back on Monday morning at 7 am and after holding for 25 minutes, (I guess they were dealing with everyone else whos power they shut off), my boyfriend talked to somone who said it could be up to 3 days before they turned our power back on!!! Um, no, it even says on the shut off notice it could take 3 days to turn the power back on, and that would be 6, not 3 business days either. She also said we should have never been shut off because she saw that we had indeed paid the past due amount and $100 towards the current amount. He of course asked to talk to a supervisor and they said one would have to call him back... And one did 4 hours later... Someone is supposed to come by 5:30 PM and reconnect us. It is now 2 pm and I have seen no one thus far.
Needless to say the power company will be getting the bill for the generator ($110) and I am writing letters to the entire board of directors, president, and all vice presidents of allegheny power and the CEO of allegheny energy, plus the governor, senator and the President Obama... Excessive? I don't think so. They will continue to do this to people with small children, pets, people with medical needs etc. And that is morally and ethically wrong. We live in the United States of America and they think its ok to do this? No its not... I hope this never happens to you.
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