Gexa Energy has been lambasted by a customer claiming they offered her a rate that looked 5 cents cheaper than it really was.
There are a couple reasons this might be the case. She either was offered a variable electric rate that proceeded to jump in price soon after she signed up or they left off 4.5 cents from the advert which would be the TDSP charges.
The TDSP charges are standard pass-through charges that are the same for each residential customer in a service territory.
There are a handful of service territories throughout Texas that each have a different TDSP charge that gets past through on your residential electric bill.
If you are in North Texas your TDSP charges would be coming from Oncor and in Houston it would be CenterPoint Energy.
CenterPoint Energy is a territory that has TDSP charges in the range of 4.5 cents per kWh. It could be the 5 cents per kWh that were left off the advertisement is this charge and she just rounded up.
I recently saw a Facebook advertisement where a similar tactic was used to entice customers to call to order an electric rate plan that did not include TDSP’s in advert.
I called to see if the electric rate was really 7.5 but in reality it needed an extra 3 – 4.5 cents per kWh added to the price to be the real all-in electricity price.
I cannot be certain this is what this Gexa Energy customer experienced but it sounds like a possibility. When reading some additional reviews some other Gexa Energy customers had shed more light on the issue.
Jing, explained that there is a rate advertised by Gexa Energy for 7.5 cents per kWh but there is a big complicated catch.
There is a $100 bill credit that works so long as you stay within the range of 1,000 – 2,000 kWh. Jing went on to explain that they changed his “end billing cycle date”. He said his last billing cycle had 34 days in it causing him to use just over 2,000 kWh. He lost out on the $100 bill credit which dramatically increases his average electric per kWh price.
Sounds very confusing. Even a standard fixed electric rate plan has a little confusion as most have a small customer service charge.
A $10 fee averaged into 2,000 kWh hours equals .005 added to the rate but if you only use 1,000 kWh that averages out to .01 cent per kWh. So an advertised fixed rate plan will look a small bit higher or lower based on how much electricity you use. A
$100 credit missed out on would mean that 1,000 kWh user would see their average per kWh rate jump 10 cents per kWh! 7.5 plus 10 would be 17.5 cent per kWh.
Most people wouldn’t agree to sign up at that uncompetitive price. When people see 7.5 cent per kWh they jump at the chance maybe without considering all the details. Too many electric providers have these tricks in their ads and it’s not fair to us energy consumers trying to save a dollar.
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