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I just got into a huge battle with progress energy. I got my first bill with them early this month and immediately set up my online account with them, and set up my "wallet" with my Coastal acct info. They said my payment went through, thank you!
Today I get a letter stating it did not go through and I got charged 13.80 for their inconvenience. Ha! THEIR inconvenience?!?!
SO, I get on my Progress account and attempt to clear this up through e-bill. Can't seem to find payment button. SO I call customer service. The guy is immediately rude to me, acting like I am an idiot because the payment didn't go through and I can't figure out the e-bill. Well, he soon discovers Progress has taken away my PRIVELEGE to use e-bill, so I can either pay the $4 charge to use my credit card or I can go withdraw cash and go to a paystation(MY inconvenience!).
ANYWHO, all this because MAYBE i entered a number wrong whenI entered my account info. So even though my bill is not late, I still have to pay this $13.80 fee because my finger hit the wrong button on my keyboard. And no, ma'am, there is no supervisor who can remove that fee, but as a courtesy we will give you your e-bill privelege back JUST THIS ONCE but not until next cycle. Have a great night!
Has anyone else ever dealt with something like this from them? I don't usually get this irrate but this is my first bill with them, it isn't late, and I think it is horrible customer service!!! Ugh...mostly just wanted to vent because I couldn't reach through the phone and slap that smarmy jerk....
WOW, welcome to Progress Energy! I've never had that kind of problem with them but when I first started using their website it was a bit chaotic to me. I just use my bill pay through my bank to pay them. It's way easier.
Yep. We had progress energy in asheville for several years. We moved to a new house and all of the sudden they were demanding a HUGE deposit. Sine we didn't know we had to pay that at all we of course didn't add into our budget. We called and asked them why and they said we had one bill 1 day late. At the time we were mailing them and questioned the fact that it was post marked long before it was due is that not what is allowed? APPARENTLY NOT! We thought it was based off of post marked dates like everything else is. But now, the woman tells me that they never see the envelope when processing checks because someone else takes them out.
SO anyways. We couldn't pay that much deposit at once and explained that. Someone said they would extend the date it was due by a month, and we kept records of it and everything. 2 weeks later our electricity is turned off and we get a nasty letter stating we have to pay the deposit PLUS a reconnection fee of like 50 dollars to get it back on plus we had to pay that fee you were talking about because we had to do it over the phone!!!!. I was LIVID. and of course when I called to explain i talked to someone (whos name i even wrote down) I was told there was no record of that call and the date wasn't extended. Pay now or no electricity. It was so frustrating because I felt like i had no voice in the matter and no one to stand up for me.
I just moved to Greenville SC which is run by Duke energy. HOLY COW what a change! They actually give you 10 dollars back each month from your security deposit as long as you pay on time and they even called a week after connection and asked if everything was ok!
Last edited by saucystargazer; 04-28-2011 at 10:38 PM..
WOW, welcome to Progress Energy! I've never had that kind of problem with them but when I first started using their website it was a bit chaotic to me. I just use my bill pay through my bank to pay them. It's way easier.
Good advice.
Signing up for Progress Energy was so odd. They tried to sell us several different services in addition to electricity. For an installation charge and $6/month we could have insurance against lightening hitting our home and burning out all our appliances (something our homeowners insurance already covers), for $5/month should any of our electrical system need repair they would send out an electrician who had no more than a traffic ticket on their criminal histories, and so on. I refused all, requesting that they send info in the mail that we could review and decide.
Then I was transferred to a a person who was supposed to check to ensure that I agreed to everything I signed up for. (Electricity. I signed up for electricity.)
Then I was transferred to a "relocation specialist" who did her best to convince me to go with ATT for an internet/cable/phone package and how at $149/month it was less expensive than any alternative because TW had an installation charge. She was quite pushy and I eventually hung up.
Got a notice today that we had signed up for the electrician-without-a-criminal-history program. Called and explained and was told that this would be removed from our services and would not appear on our bill. We'll see.
Given their penchant for tacking on additional services, I can see where signing up for an automatic payment drawn from our bank account could be troublesome.
I am on easy pay and they draft my account each month also from Coastal. Never had an issue. As a matter of fact tehy even lowered my auto pay starting this month by 20 bucks!!!
I've never had any issues with them. Can you call back and try to ask for a supervisor again? I'd really be inclined to write a letter as well and I agree that sounds like terrible customer service.
I personally would never ever give a service provider of any kind access to my bank account for them to determine when they would like to pull out a payment for me.
I personally would never ever give a service provider of any kind access to my bank account for them to determine when they would like to pull out a payment for me.
Exactly, too much risk in doing this, what happens when they omit a decimal sign and they mistakenly autodraft $11,100 instead of $111.00. Then you don't notice it until 5 other checks/debits are rejected due to insufficient funds. Yes, the original service provider would eventually fix their issue, but they won't cover you for all the other insufficient funds fees/sherriffs coming to your door for writing bad checks, etc.
Either go in each month and action the payment, set up bill pay from your own bank or if you must set up an autodraft then do it to a credit card where you have more rights to contest the charges if there is an issue and at least it wouldn't bring down the rest of your finances.
I personally would never ever give a service provider of any kind access to my bank account for them to determine when they would like to pull out a payment for me.
But that isn't what I did. It isn't the automatic draft, its just where you enter your info and then when your bill comes you hop online and click pay and its done. No re-entering info everytime. Its like when you make a credit purchase online, except if you add an incorrect digit there, automatically it says "nope!" but in this case it said, "Thank you! Your payment has gone through!" when mysteriously it didn't (2 weeks later).
I tried calling back today but the guy told me e-bill is a third party provider that charges them, so they pass it along. I asked him to make a suggestion to at least alert someone if they incorrectly entered their bank info so they could change it before charging them money. Whatever, I bet this "accident" happens all the time. Seeing as how they made it impossible for me to check and see if I even had entered my info incorrectly and they suspiciously didn't have any access to that info either! Well I am going to call coastal and have them print something out for me showing that I had money in there at the time so it actually wasn't insufficient funds. At least then maybe that news investigator can expose these monopoly jerks. I thought PEPCO in DC was bad, Sheesh! Those people are saints compared to Progress!
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