Scam Pitch, “Due to the high bills we’ve had over the summer you get a 25 % discount”

Scammers are calling people and using the high electric bill summer of 2022 in Texas as a crisis they can profit from. Take this Facebook user for instance, she was not too happy and really offered a great public service by letting people know.

These call centers will call you and say because of the high summer electric bill you are qualified to receive a 25% discount off your electric rate.

When asked which electric company they don’t actually know your energy provider so they respond back with, “Well the one you currently have.” or something to that effect.

This wise consumer spotted the scam and she is right it was probably a scam to clean her out. If she went further with the scammer they may have asked her to confirm some important information for security reasons.

If I had to guess they might have asked for her billing information, perhaps her social security number, and any additional things to get to her money.

These are high order scams although many people feel like they were scammed when their electric bill doubled or tripled this summer by their trusted electric company.

Prepaid electric companies are often referred to as scams as well because the price is much higher than traditional energy suppliers but the sales person doesn’t always make that abundantly clear.

It is important to note that all electric companies will let you roll over to a non-fixed variable electric rate when your contract expires.

These electric providers have an incentive to send you a reminder letter in the mail, through email and however many other ways to convince you to lock in to a fixed rate before you come off contract.

The provider will have you locked in their grasp another year or two at perhaps a rate you really didn’t appreciate but the alternative is seeing the prices spike when they go out of control like they did this summer.

For many providers you can’t blame them if they gave you ample warning to renew your contract but there are the electric providers that are in a situation where they can only have so many customers at a time. What I mean is some providers don’t execute their business well and can only take on so many customers.

What can happen is an electric company selectively does not inform certain customers that their electric contract is coming off contract. In these cases a part of their business strategy is to raise the rate on you and generate some additional profit, they genuinely are not sad to see you go.

There are statistically certain customers that become higher risk throughout their contract based on certain criteria privy to the electric company. They don’t want every customer, some they would like to see go.

The provider can use the variable rate contract to make some profit and encourage certain customers to take a hike. These energy contracts have there place but the residential electric provider does not have to reveal the exact formula they use to raise and lower their electric rate plan.

The provider can indiscriminately raise and lower it at will against what their general rate plan seemed to allude to as being a competitive plan.

In summary, there are various scams in the retail electric world but the absolute worst are the ones that are not electric providers at all but scammers pretending to be your company to access your bank account.