The Naperville Sun has received several complaints about Nicor Gas bills. It's summer but readers' bills don't reflect that -- usually bills come every two months in the warm months. The Citizens Utility Board also has received complaints -- almost 500 about their bills. The consumer watchdog group says some customers are being billed inaccuratly because Nicor is not reading meters every two months as required by law. When meters are estimated instead of read, customers can end up paying less than what they're consuming, a CUB official says. Problems come when the meters are read after months of being estimated. Cub says when the meter is finally read, customers get hit with extermely high bills because of the accumulation, and because Nicor charges all upaid bills at the last month's rate. Nicor attributes the higher than usual customer complaints to billing changes. The company is offering some relief. Through Sept. 19, certain customers will be eligible to pay half their balance and pay the rest in installments over nine months.
Tell us your stories about high energy costs and what you plan to do to deal with them as cooler weather heads our way. With natural gas prices hitting $1.45 per therm in July, what will that mean for you?
I am on the automatic payment plan. NICOR should be deducting payments every month, but when I got my bill on Saturday, it was $567 dollars! And the bill covered Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov Dec and January! I Called to ask what happened, and they said "NICOR didn't bill you for those months." Huh? I'm on the automatic payment plan.
I am extremely upset with NICOR. I can accept estimated billing every two months; however, my home has been vacant for six months. My account has been credited every other month because of the previous month's estimated read. The day I close on the sale of my home happens to coincide with an estimated read month. When I called NICOR to ask for an actual read, they said that they didn't do that (even when the account is being closed). IT IS UP TO THE CUSTOMER TO READ THEIR OWN METER AND THEN CALL CUSTOMER SERVICE. IF NOT, THEY CAN DEMAND PAYMENT ON THE AMOUNT THEY BILLED (ESTIMATED....AND INCORRECT). THIS IS ROBBERY.
They told me that it was their right to do this, and that it was so stated in the CUB handbook. Who has one? Not me. I would have not known this had I not called to inquire about the final fill.
How many people know this? Not many, I'm sure.
I own a business in Naperville. NICOR makes it very challenging every month to even think about a profit structure we once enjoyed even as little as 6 months ago. The City of Naperville puts us in the same boat with recent electric bills at record highs. My hats off to the City utility department, though. In the 14 years I have been in business here, we have never suffered a loss of business income to an electrical outage (knock on wood). So if paying a little more to maintain infrastructure is making this difference, I'm glad to do it...within reason, of course.
Are there other provider choices in this area that are mroe cost effective? Anyone use them?
I had a very large gas bill left from the winter months. I contacted Nicor and made payment arrangements. I made the initial payment in March. The payment arrangement was after the inital payment, I had to pay it out in 3 installments. The payment was due on the 9th of the month. On the day I was to pay my last payment, Nicor came out and cut my gas off. (I had made a deposit at the bank, that would not post until the next business day) When I got home that evening (it was a Monday evening) my gas was off. I had to wait until my money posted (about 9:00 pm), and paid the bill before they would even tell me when they could come out and cut it back on. My payment was not late. Then they charged me $446 deposit because they said I had been late 3 times within the year.
Rising costs, lower consumption. Grab a blanket.
My favorite thing about Nicor isn't how much my bill varies from estimated month to month where my meter is read as it is all the ridiculous fees which make up for half of my Nicor bill. I live alone and often spend so much time on the road working that most of my meals are takeout, so my gas stove gets very little if any use on an average month. For one hot shower a day I'm paying close to $15 a month in delivery charges and taxes, or $180 a year for the pleasure of being a Nicor customer.
If I owned instead of renting I'd have replaced my gas appliances with electric and have told Nicor where they can stick it years ago. Also, as someone else posted, the amount of horror stories I've heard about Nicor from people with any kind of service disruption it really makes you wonder what you're even paying for.
On the other hand, the Naperville public utilities are absolutely top notch. The response time for any kind of electrical outage is phenomenal. In the five years I've lived here I've lost power once in a storm when a tree branch fell on some lines. Power was restored within the hour. Compare this to Nicor's response time which is somewhere in between "When we get around to it!" and "If we feel like it!"
I think Nicor's customer service is despicable. They once shut our apartment unit's gas off "in error" and it took them five days to hook it back up again, telling us that during that entire time we could be expecting a serviceman anywhere between 8 am and midnight! They jerk their consumers around and treat them terribly because they know they are the only game in town when it comes to natural gas and we have no other options. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they are breaking the rules and robbing their customers blind. What can we do about it, after all?
No matter that Nicor is offering customers to pay half now and half later. Undoubtedly they will also be ever so happy to charge interest on any unpaid balance -- so you'll really end up paying more in the long run. My experience has been that Nicor tends to "estimate" on the high side. Consumers are allowed to read their own meter during the months that Nicor estimates it -- go on-line and find out when it needs to be turned in. I've done this in the past. That way I know I am paying for what I am using each monthy -- no more, no less.
Seems to me if Nicor isn't reading meters when it should be and then is billing customers for past useage based upon the current month rate it is opening itself up for being accused of billing abuse. I'm not sure if the existing regulations allow such billing practices, but the higher energy costs climb the greater the opportunity exists for utilities to unfairly gouge customers with billing practices that might be exploiting loopholes.
I doubt if there are any of us who would tolerate an oil company sending us a consolidated bill for our past 2 months gasoline purchases and then expect to be compensated at the highest pump price during the entire billing period which is what it sounds like Nicor is trying to pull off here.
If Nicor wants to send a bill for 2 or more months then it should publish a rate for every calendar month of the year and charge customers a prorated amount for each month in that billing cycle.... two months in the billing cycle they should charge 1/2 at the first monthly rate and 1/2 at the the second monthly rate, three months in the billing cycle and they should charge 1/3 at the first monthly rate, 1/3 at the second monthly rate, 1/3 at the third monthly rate... and so forth based upon how long it has been since they last read the meter.
If Nicor doesn't like that kind of an averaging method, fine they can come out and read the meter every month.