We live in a modest home here in the Poconos. We've lived in the same house for the past seven years. Every year our electric bill has creeped higher and higher. When PPL's cap was lifted, we were told by them our electric bill would increase 35-40%. And it has. We applied for their WRAP program, where they come out and check out your house, even do energy saving repairs. They sealed cracks in our tounge and groove ceilings, they sprayed insulation in our attic and even changed out our hot water heater. And our bills continue to go up. We live in about 1700 square feet of the house. We just received a $499 electric bill for one month. ONE MONTH! When we called them in the past and asked them to come check on our meter, we were told it was working fine and that we have a SMART METER, which reports our electric use through the phone line. Well it must be really smart because we don't have a landline here - just two cellphones. We pay about $5000 a year in electric. I take home $550 a week from my job and now my electric bill accounts for almost an entire week's salary. I cannot believe we use that much electricity. Last year we replaced all of our old electric baseboards with brand new high energy efficient ones. Our bill went up. We replaced all of our lightbulbs with the squiggly ones. Our bill went up. We got rid of an extra fridge in the basement. Our bill went up. We never have our heat set higher than 67 or 68 degrees. Our bill went up. Our bill just keeps going up higher and higher. It's so stressful. We have two children to feed and support. None of our neighbors get bills higher than $150 or $175 a month, yet ours is now $499. We were on the 'budget' plan and paying $320 a month year round until the cap came off. Now every month it's more and more. I feel like we are being ripped off and it's really starting to affect our quality of life. Someone please suggest what we should do. I feel like we are being held hostage by PPL.
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