Complaint Review: Xcel Energy/Public Service Company of Colorado - Denver Colorado

Ever since my fiance and I have moved in together, there has been nothing but trouble from Xcel Energy. I know for a fact that other people have been ripped-off by this unorganized, unhelpful, bunch of incompetent people that work at Excel Energy.

Let me begin....We moved into a house we're renting back in August 2001. We called Xcel to change the name of the person paying the Xcel bill each month. In order for them to do that they charged us $200!!! The heat was already set up in the house, all they had to do was change the name of the person paying the bill. When we received our first bill it was over $300.00. $200 of that was for the "set-up" fee and the remaining amount was for heat & all of the dumb taxes they apply towards the bill. I called Xcel explaining that there was no way we could afford the total amount on the bill and so for $200 of the bill we did a payment plan, where they split up the amount requested into different bills. They do this for 6 months. The next month we received a statement saying if we don't pay the bill then they will shut off our service. What bill? When is it due? We called Xcel and told them we never recieved a bill and didn't know what they were talking about (keep in mind, I was put on hold for 30 minutes). They said that when the first bill was paid there was a couple of dollars that we paid over the bill amount and that because of that it broke the payment plan we set up, so we owed the $200 right away. I said, no we don't because we can't afford that, so we set up a new payment plan. Every month there has been a problem with Xcel's billing. For the past 2 or 3 months we have received a discontinuance notice stating that we haven't paid our bill and need to right away or they will shut our service off. That's a load of crap because we pay our bills on time every time. The last time this happened we spoke with another customer representative (who, as all Xcel representatives will show, know absolutely nothing about what they're doing). He told us it actually takes 8(!) days from the time we mail the bill to the time it gets to them. Another load of crap!! It proabaly takes them 8 days to figure out that the pile of stuff on their desk is people's money! Anyway's I told him to stop sending us those notices because we do pay our bills (our credit history is probably screwed up because of this incompetent company). Well, guess what? This current month (January) another notice of discontinuance came in the mail on January 10th. The notice stated that if we don't have our bill paid in full by January 9th (notice that their notice was a day late)then they would shut off our service. We paid our last bill on Dec. 26th and have record that we have done so. Why would they send us a notice of discontinuance if we have already paid our bill? So, frustrated again, we called Xcel. The person on the phone said that when the bills come to us and it says on the bottom "amount due" that it means that there is still a total bill to be paid off (what in the $#!! does that mean?!) So, my fiance asked how much is "left" on our bill. The customer rep said $105.00. But, how can that be? We've been paying a bill that they give us every month? Instead of arguing, he paid the $105.00, but I feel that we've been majorly ripped-off, that there was a glitch in the payment system at Xcel Energy. We can barely afford to pay the regular bill, let alone Excel's mistakes too! By the way Xcel, you need to know that it takes at least 8 days for mail to get to us as well!!! It works both ways.