“Shocking” Bills From NY’s Alternative Energy Suppliers (ESCO’s). How has your experience been?

Hello and good morning. This is Bradley Bailyn, and this is episode number six of my legal podcast.

Today we are going to change the name of the podcast from You Can’t Be Serious (YCBS!) to SURPRISE! because that’s when people tend to call me… when they wake up with a real nasty surprise and then they call and wake me up with that real nasty surprise. So if I can give you some good information here, maybe you can wait until 9:00 a.m. to give me a call. All right.

No, seriously, I had a client come into me recently because they got a $38,000 bill from Con Edison. They were given, I forget what… a week or two weeks to pay the bill or Con Edison was going to turn off their power.

They had no ability to pay that. And that was basically going to shut them down.

We went through a lot of struggling and fighting and ultimately got it resolved.

But this is what happened… and you really should understand this before it happens to you.

Somebody suggested to them that it may be a good idea to save money on the electric bill by using a different energy supplier than Con Edison. You still have to pay Con Edison to distribute your power, but you can pay another company as the power supplier because we have a deregulated energy supply market here in New York.

In plain English with that basically means is you’ve got all kinds of semi-ethical, unethical, sometimes very ethical salespeople running around trying to make big commissions by getting you to change your energy supplier.

There is very limited regulation on energy suppliers unlike Con Edison, which is very heavily regulated. When prices surge and unethical things are inflicted upon your company, there are a lot fewer options currently available than there are against Con Edison when you have a problem with Con Edison.

The way it works is as follows.

They ask you to sign a contract for a year or two years, promising you that it’s going to lower your electric bill.

You then have the right to check off separate billing or you have the right to check consolidated billing. They almost always are going to try to check consolidated billing because that means that no matter how much money they bill, as far as I understand the process, Con Edison gives them the money for their bill. And then Con Edison’s job is to collect the money from you.

So if you have a dispute with Con Edison, then they’re going to say they can negotiate with you on the distribution charge. But on the supply charge, they can’t negotiate because all they are is a collection agent. Then you say, OK, fine. Well, then how do I bring a complaint? How do I deal with the energy supply company?

Oh, well, that’s a lot harder and more expensive.

So basically, you’re going to turn off my power and because you’re collecting for somebody else and you already gave them the money, now you’re going to turn off my power if I don’t pay their bill because you already gave them the money? Yes, that’s what I’ve been told. That’s the process.

So what I’ve learned is that at a minimum, if you’re going to use an energy supply company, you better check off separate billing so they don’t have the right to turn off your power when they give you some monstrously high bill.

But regardless of that, it’s most people’s experience that you’re just better off sticking with Con Edison for all of your electric needs.

I’m going to do a separate video about how to fight with Con Edison because they do a lot of not nice things too. And I’ve dealt with them as well.

But in terms of energy supply companies, really the bottom line is better to steer clear. If you’re currently already locked into an energy supply company contract and you’re having problems with your bill or you need to potentially get out of it, please feel free to ask me any questions you have.

If you have a question you’d like me to cover here, please feel free to send it off and maybe I’ll do just that. If there’s a subscribe button, please don’t hesitate to click it so that you learn about the kinds of things that only I cover.

The standard disclaimer I don’t know your specific situation.

This is not legal advice. This is just general information that you should be aware of. Please do not rely on anything I say in making your own decisions.

Please call me or another competent lawyer. I will not be liable if you rely on anything in this video and get yourself in trouble. Thank you.