Just gota vent

skeets · Oct 10, 2019

I just got the power bill,, for the month 64 bucks and change not to bad cause her breathing machine runs 24/7/365,, Now I look at the bottom line and it has more than doubled after they tack on all their damned charges and fees 70 bucks worth! WHAT ARE THESE DAMNED CHARGES? Thats more than my bill, and after a call to the company rep who knows less about this than I do,,,grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ,,, I know they are in business to make money but rape is all it is. I don't mind paying what is due but after an hours worth of searching on first energy's web site I am no closer to finding any answers than when I started,, OK Im done whining now

Bmyers · Oct 10, 2019

Those fees can be killers. It is sad when the fees add up to more than the bill and it is the government/company's way of lining their pocket a little bit more.

Roadworthy · Oct 10, 2019

The utility company should be able to provide a breakdown of those fees upon request. They may include meter reader fees, line maintenance, taxes, etc. You may need to speak with a supervisor but the information is available. It may not reduce your bill but you'll know where the money went - supposedly.

GreensvilleJay · Oct 10, 2019

Just be HAPPY you're not on Ontario Hydro ! They say electricity is only 10 c/KwH BUT by the time you add up all those other charges( delivery,storage,line losses,etc) it's really 25 c/KwH.
To add insult to injury, my shop next door,122' CLOSER to the source of electrons cost a LOT more due to it's 'classification' of general service not residential. It's bad enough I may use 'lil toot' to dig a 135' trench and run power from my house, gotta do the math on that', as it could open a nasty 'can of worms'.
I could go on for hours about how they STOLE millions every month before 'smart meters'...
BTW Ontario Hydro has 1,000s on the 'sunshine list' up here, employees being paid( NOT EARNING) over 100,000 Canucks. If you have time, and a strong stomach, just google 'ontario sunshine list 2018'...
sigh
ok, my vent is over...

Jay

CaveCreekRay · Oct 10, 2019

Brother Skeets,

Taxation is the new gold mine for our governments, both big and small. Try renting a car for that cheapo "special" $29 a day rate and by the time they tack on the taxes and fees, it's $60 a day. Same with hotel rooms out here in Phoenix. The taxes equal the room rate.

In most states, the rates charged by the utilities have to go through the Corporation Commission (or similar quasi-governmental entity) before they go into effect. Your problem is the amount of power you use is very low. It makes the hook-up fees, the biodiversity fees, queer-electron re-homing fee, the "we gotta buy new trucks fee", a "save the environment" fee, and the all-important "fee" fee, and the obligatory state and local taxes look huge by comparison.

Sounds like the fees where you are are fixed irrespective of kwh used. Be glad you are out there. The average power bill out here in summer is 3 to 4 times yours, or higher.

William1 · Oct 10, 2019

Did you know, one of the taxes on our phone bill is to pay for the war of 1812. Long since paid for but they decided to leave it in because 'people were used to paying it'.
Did you know, the GSP in NJ, the tolls were supposed to be removed after the bonds were repaid but they decided to keep it so the toll booth attendants could keep working?

We are nickel and dimed to death. 50% of my phone bill is made of over a dozen different fees. I guess I should be happy I have a very large house, my wife likes to consume electricity. My 'cheap' power bill month is $225, a bad month is close to $750!!! All electric home. Propane only fuels the grill. There is a $30 fee and tax each time the 100 gallon tank is filled, so if I buy five or fifty gallons, that fee is the same. So the fill up only happens once every three years.

RCW · Oct 10, 2019

Skeets my friend, don't feel alone - - I don't have numbers in front of me, but last electric bill was 3.3 cents/kwH for the SUPPLY, then all the other stuff gets added..4+cents for DELIVERY, and the taxes, etc. Think I end up near 10/kwH.

Pisser is our utility will blatantly say they do not do routine vegetative distribution maintenance (trees near/around street overhead lines). It's more profitable to just go out and fix issues when trees come down and cause outages....

Now after seeing Jay's 25c/kwH, I think I'll shut up....

sdk1968 · Oct 10, 2019

skeets,

another poster up there said it.... admin fees, electricity recoup fees, a sub purchase fee & so on..

and may God help you if you are getting your electric from a CO OP like Buckeye Rural Electric. They buy their electric from AEP/Ohio Power then resell it to you at double the price.

the bill was always double what ever the fee for the usage was. last bill i got from them before moving was .26 per KWH plus th e fees & such made it end up around .49 per KWH total.

and if you use 1,000 KWH in a month? yep thats $490.

when we bought this little farm, we made sure that it was on AEP instead of a CO OP.
4,000sqft house & 1,200sqft in the workshop.. all electric house. NEVER goes over $240 a month. HUGE difference.

Daren Todd · Oct 10, 2019

RCW said:
Skeets my friend, don't feel alone - - I don't have numbers in front of me, but last electric bill was 3.3 cents/kwH for the SUPPLY, then all the other stuff gets added..4+cents for DELIVERY, and the taxes, etc. Think I end up near 10/kwH.

Pisser is our utility will blatantly say they do not do routine vegetative distribution maintenance (trees near/around street overhead lines). It's more profitable to just go out and fix issues when trees come down and cause outages....

Now after seeing Jay's 25c/kwH, I think I'll shut up....

They send crews out and poison the underbrush under the lines here. And have a tree company under full time contract to go around and trim the mature trees back so an errant limb doesn't mess up the lines.

But we are also in tornado alley coupled with hellacious thunder storms. Then in winter we get 4" of ice with 2" of snow on top of it.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

CaveCreekRay · Oct 11, 2019

This costs a bundle to contract...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXcIqR01_d0

North Idaho Wolfman · Oct 12, 2019

I guess my $120 a month electric bill isn't too bad.

Lycomech96 · Oct 20, 2019

I have a dinky little house and a workshop about the same size. My electric rate went from 13 cents to 16 cents/KWH in a little over a year. My max bills are about $150 in winter and sometimes under a hundred a month in summer.

What gets me is every week you see notices in the classifieds where some new "energy company" has opened up shop in their basement. They are just middlemen brokers that increase the prices we pay. Pennsylvania Power and Light used to be ONE entity that generated the power, distributed the power and billed you. After Three Mile Island, I guess power companies decided to legally insulate themselves from lawsuits that would seriously cripple their company by breaking up into separate parts. Generation, distribution, building and owning power plants etc.

I have an idea. You and a group of your like minded neighbors start up your own "energy company" buy electricity on the wholesale bidding market and resell it at zero increase. BUT, you set the rates at high levels to discourage others, then issue rebates to the group of owners at certain intervals.

RCW · Oct 23, 2019

We have a bunch of "community" solar projects around here. 80 acres just completed, and I've heard of some planned up to 1,500 acres.

We get mailings offering for us to sign up to take part in their "savings". Last said they already had 300 of their 3,500 homeowners enrolled....better HURRY!

I throw them all away. Not sure what the savings will be, if any. Betting the savings will be for the solar company, not me......

bucktail · Oct 23, 2019

Mine peaks around 60 in the summer Runs 40ish in the winter and can dip to near 20 in between. Natural gas is billed separately.

Tarmy · Oct 23, 2019

Not only are our taxes/fees way way higher than what you guys are talking about...they can’t even keep the power on now!

CA power, water and basically all the utilities are a big revenue source for government. The state and cities also make all the utilities provide all kinds of “community benefits “ as well. We get to pay for campgrounds, free services for hundreds of thousands of poor people (which here is basically anybody who claims it) and all the politically correct carbon saving crap...just wasting billions.

lugbolt · Oct 26, 2019

same here. More taxes than there is actual usage fee. Makes me mad as an old wet hen but ain't nothing we can do about it. Why do I say that? Cause no matter how we vote, the processes are all rigged. If the government wants something, they're going to get it however they want and whenever they want. But when you call them & tell them there's a problem, such as calling the road department about a big hole in the road, there "ain't enough money to fix it". Bull!!

Just look at "medical" marijuana. All a money grab for the government (taxed heavily) and those who already have plenty of money. They have to because the application fee is $100,000 and cash only. Now that it's up and going, they'll just raise the taxes on it every year. Same for minimum wage. The governments here want it higher, they get more tax income on $11 than they do on $8.50. Fuel taxes? Don't even get me started!!

It's to the point where we are getting nowhere, many of us are losing out...paying more for everything (COL goes up all the time) and our income isn't changing to meet the COL.

...extremely sore subject with me!

skeets · Oct 27, 2019

Why do you think that once they get elected they never leave, it aint because any of them care about you or me, its because of the money, gifts and perks. Really has anyone ever met a POOR politician?

bucktail · Oct 27, 2019

skeets said:
Why do you think that once they get elected they never leave, it aint because any of them care about you or me, its because of the money, gifts and perks. Really has anyone ever met a POOR politician?

There are some that ought to be

mikester · Oct 27, 2019

skeets said:
I just got the power bill,, for the month 64 bucks and change not to bad cause her breathing machine runs 24/7/365,, Now I look at the bottom line and it has more than doubled after they tack on all their damned charges and fees 70 bucks worth! WHAT ARE THESE DAMNED CHARGES? Thats more than my bill, and after a call to the company rep who knows less about this than I do,,,grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ,,, I know they are in business to make money but rape is all it is. I don't mind paying what is due but after an hours worth of searching on first energy's web site I am no closer to finding any answers than when I started,, OK Im done whining now

Heres another take...

Those service fees are the cost of keeping connected to the network and having reliable service. We just got our power back up after a 2 hour outage. Before I start grumbling I realize that in the past year we had about 6 hours down time. That is still 99.9% uptime. Certainly not worth the cost of installing a backup genny.

Living in the country means my only internet is either dialup at $60/month with phone line, satellite internet at $100/month and only 100GB of data transfer per month, cell phone internet which would cost $1,000.00/month using 100GB of data, or wireless point to point at $100/month with a 300GB bucket.

On average my internet is completely down between 10-20% of the time and I only get up to half my rated connection speed that I pay for 70% of the time.

If my electricity was in brown out mode 70% of the time and completely unavailable up to 20% of the time Id be going off the grid.

I am happy to pay for a reliable electricity connection.

I really feel like we Canadians are being screwed by telecom and internet companies. Third world countries have cheaper internet and cell phone service...and faster connections to. At least the cellular network is more reliable than the old landlines. Just crazy expensive.

skeets · Oct 27, 2019

No Mikester please understand Im not complaining about the cost of the power, it is all the hidden charges that jerk me off. I know men equipment medical and everything else that goes with running a business costs money I get that. Its the charges that no one can explain even if its just a couple bucks, from EVERYONE thats adds up to a bunch and no one can tell me what it is or in whose pocket it is going. One thing for sure when ever we have power outages where I have to use my generator. I dont get a rebate, or anything off my bill for the inconveniences it has caused us

Just gota vent

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