Frontier Utilities is an electric company that operates in Texas, New Jersey and several other states. They have varying customer reviews. Some customers rate them highly and some have bad ratings but what is the reason for the negative reviews?
We will try and get down to the reason some of the reviews are bad and what might be the reason.
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Kim out of Toms Rivers New Jersey talks about the electric company as if it is a scam. As a company you won’t get very far in business if you are running an illegal enterprise so let’s dig a little deeper.
Kim explains that when you order electric service through Frontier you will just save pennies to begin with.
After the small penny savings you experience Kim says they will double and triple your rate with no notice.
What may have happened with Kim is that she could have signed up on an introductory electric rate that can go up on her later.
Somewhere in the advertisement and also in the Electricity Facts Label would have been a notice that this could happen.
It may have been as subtle as saying the rate is a variable price and changes based on Frontiers own formula. We weren’t there at the time so we can’t know for certain.
It is important to understand that in this scenario Frontier Utilities or any provider offering a variable price is not obligated to disclose the exact formula they use to lower and raise your electric rate.
The electric company has discretion as to how much they reveal about how they choose to lower and raise the price.
With a traditional electric company you are given a post-paid invoice that is 45 days out or so. So let’s say Kim got an electric bill that was double the introductory rate she started with.
This may have startled her but she looked at the kilowatt hour usage and saw that she was using more energy so she decided to not have the air conditioner on so high.
The problem can be that although she started to reduce her usage to help save money several more days have gone by outside the billed usage where she was using a lot of electricity and at a higher rate.
So she made those adjustments in not using so much energy and then the next bill comes in the mail.
The next bill was not as low on the electrical usage as she thought it would be because like we said earlier she had not made the adjustments soon enough to totally reflect on the new bill.
To add to not making the adjustments in lowering the amount of electric usage perhaps the rate went up higher as well. She stated that the rate eventually “tripled”.
The thousands of dollars spent to primarily cool her house can be a bitter pill to swallow. Throwing out terms like “scam” is how a lot of people would feel when writing such a large check for this service.
Christine out of Katy Texas has a complaint that offers enough clarity where I think I see what is going on. She had a bill due on 9/22 and paid a little of it earlier then when it was due. She paid an early amount of $200 on 9/11 which for many people is a lot of money.
This payment should have reflected on her balance at Frontier Utilities to show now only $108 is due on her bill.
Instead the payment was no reflected and an auto-draft occurred at 9/22 and drafted the whole $308 that was originally due had she not made that early payment.
Frontier Utilities gladly accepted the early partial payment but they then drafted for the whole bill amount as if she never made that early payment.
Christine has now given Frontier $508 of her money when they were only supposed to have $308 to pay for the electric service there at her Katy Texas home.
This situation seems like a problem on Frontier Utilities side as their auto-bill pay should have recognized they deducted an early payment and immediately applied it to the balance.
I really see Christine’s side to this issue and understand why not being returned the $200 is infuriating and how she would feel compelled to leave a 1 star review. Not everyone has an extra $200 laying around.
I hope Frontier was able to return the money to her instead of leaving it in their accounts for the next billing cycle. This issue seems like an easy customer service situation to resolve.
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Christa gets straight to the point with a glowing review of Frontier Utilities. It’s a full 5 stars and stands out as a needle compared to so many on Yelp of people leaving bad reviews. She says she is “completely satisfied“. She also mentioned that their customer service is “promptly responsive“. She uses the phrase, “to a great service result“. She also uses the term, “as long as you stay to your plan guidelines, your set.” I wonder what “staying to the plan guidelines” means and why she didn’t offer clarity on this point?
It seems a bit mysterious as to what the plan guidelines are and how that would help. She mentions she only pays about $72 a month for a two story 1800 sw ft home. I will say that $72 bill is fantastic for that house, I wonder why so many others have not had the same experience?
Donny Eisenbach
Donny has been writing about the deregulated energy markets since early 2007. His knowledge has helped consumers lower their electricity cost.
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