Arizona Public Service

We are a family of 5 that recently moved to a new home in September. My husband has always paid our APS bill in full and on time which is proven on record by simply pulling up our payment history. When we moved, we received our bill with an amount that included our last bill from our last residence and our new current charge for the new residence. This was basically a double bill but we knew we had to pay it. The unfortunate part was that when we started new service in the new residence, my husband added me on to the account and in doing so APS was able to pull up an old delinquent account in my name from six years ago and they slapped on those charges to the already doubled bill which now came out to be over $600.

Of course, they demanded the entire sum to be paid in full immediately, otherwise no electricity. That wasn't going to happen considering we are like every other family in this city who pretty much lives paycheck to paycheck with children to support and feed. Oh, not to mention other bills we have to pay in order to live a normal human life. We were able to pay off the immediate bill and I had to set up a payment plan for the delinquent amount which would basically be an extra $100 on top of our bill for the next three months. Talk about a financial strain when you're on a tight and strict budget!

But the worse was yet to come unknown to us even after we paid off the debt. As I stated before our payment history has been "impeccable" and I quote a credit supervisor from APS that said these exact words to me when she looked up my account! So, I'd like a valid and reasonable explanation of why we now have to pay a $300 deposit for supposedly being "late" on our payments three times in one year per APS?

I went through three supervisors to try to get someone to make sense of why it was necessary to give $300 of my hard earned money when they already make a killing off of us with bills ranging from $140 - $200+ every single month? The answer I got was that they deemed my current account as "late" because my past delinquent account (from six years ago!) was still considered a "past due" bill. Of course, it is! It's six years old! They also based it off one, only one incident where I paid half of my bill which was a whole $60, 10 days late. Not like 30 days late, only 10 days. And it was only half of the bill not paid! Are you kidding me? Nobody bothered to explain to me though when I set up payment arrangements to resolve my old bill, that regardless of the fact that I'm paying off an old debt I would still have to dish out an extra $300 when I was done.

Needless to say, I'm now stuck paying $300 that I do not have. The supervisor told me they would give me a "courtesy" of payments on the deposit. Gee, how kind of you thieving people? What choice do I have though? My family can't go without electricity! I know for a fact that I'm not the only one who's fallen victim to this bullcrap robbery from APS. A friend of mine got the same notice just a week later from mine. And yes, the *** threaten to shut off your power if you don't cough it up!

What about the unfortunate people who absolutely can not pay a single dime for this deposit because they have to save every single dime to feed their family instead? I'm pretty sure they'd choose groceries over a stupid meaningless deposit that was meant to just rob people! Another large corporation taking advantage of innocent people who abide by the rules, work hard and pay their taxes, but no, it's never enough. They seem to forget that the saying "money is the root of all evil" is oh so true.

Just received my new bill. I try very hard to conserve energy and keep my costs very low. I am on the 12p-7p program. Well my bill is $146 which is the lowest ever, my total electric usage with tax was $55 and there are $77 worth of misc charges of which $42 is the delivery charge and $8 is the basic service charge. Really? $50 to deliver and and have service for $55 worth of electricity? Would someone please tell me how to fix this? This is just outright theft of the American people!

What choice do I have but to pay this bill as all the others. When you don't have a choice in your electric company, I don't think the electric company should have a monopoly on the market either.

I hate having to put one star to get my complaint registered. I do not think this company even deserves one star at this point in time. They know ** well when poor people get their checks. They refuse to adjust their bill cycle to when people get their checks. They always fix it to where they want their money sooner than when people get their money to pay it. This way they create false record of late payment history. And then, they can use that false record to pad their pillows with a new "deposit" requirement to just keep the electric on. Our deposit was half our monthly income, $600. We aren't living large. We live in a leaky rental with AC that doesn't work very well. We cannot afford to move and the landlord cannot afford to fix it. In our case, thanks to now partially well-known banking criminality and other problems, we were behind. So what? A kid 2 blocks south of me that needs a breathing machine to live also was cut-off of electricity. Lots of houses in my neighborhood went dark even when their new "deposit" requirements were half of what ours was.

This is redlining based not on race but on income. This is an actionable issue. But just like all the other ones, I guess no attorney or politician has the cojones to take it on. Of course, after the APS requirement, then lots of people didn't have the money to pay their water bill. Then, the city shut off all of our waters and we had to pay a fine to get it back on. We paid half the bill and promised that when we got our check, we would pay the rest in lieu of eating. But no, the city wanted to pad their pillow with that fine. I hear they shut off 5 houses' water on my block alone. They could not wait 5 days for us to get our check. Half the payment only got us 3 days of water.

The first incident was while relocating our meter. Per APS regs, I had to locate the supply. After the area was blue staked, I dug where it was marked and found a cable in a few hours. Called APS to verify but was told not the correct cable. Dug for another month working around my job. After further inspection first cable was correct. More recently meter was showing an error code so after hours on hold and speaking to three APS reps, they assured me a low battery was the problem. A tech would fix the problem next day. Three days later after no contact, I called Cyndi ***, person who caused all my extra hard labor and she had tech out here next day. For a "low battery" the whole meter was replaced and our usage was estimated. Now after comparing our bill with the APS sample bill on line, there are three charges on ours that do not appear on the sample and it is more than a third of the entire bill. By how many names can they call and screw you? We will charge what we want and call it what we want. The charges that are the same make a note of saying approved by the ACC or the Feds so how these charges be on my bill legally?

I moved to Arizona in February 2010. Since living here, I have paid my utility bills in full, on the 1st of each month through my Federal credit union bill pay service. Yesterday, I received a letter from APS, stating that my payments have been late each month. I explained that I am a 100% disabled veteran and only get paid on the 1st of each month, so at that time, I pay all of my bills. APS states that because of the area where I moved to, the due date is on the 17th of each month and so by the 30th of the month, I am late

So, I inquired about getting an extension of 1 to 2 days to avoid being late but was told that because my account is current, I don't qualify for an extension. I suffer from chronic pain, high anxiety, and depression. This has caused a worsening in my medical conditions. It seems that I am caught in a "Catch 22". This seems to be an unfortunate and unfair rule to persons on fixed incomes.

This month I received my bill electronically, and one graph showed I had used more than the average household with the same footage. The other graph showed I used less than half of what they showed I used last year. My equalizer payment rose because of the false (estimated) reading, and they did not adjust for their mistake. I doubt if I am the only one to be taken advantage of with this type of fraud.

I have a large family of 11 and have full custody of my 8 kids from a previous marriage. I have recently been remarried and had one child with my second wife. I have a fairly decent job but it just about covers the living expenses for a family the size of ours. Many times during the course of a year a couple of bills slip into the almost 30 days past due stage and sometimes it involves a utility or two.

APS in the Phoenix area provides our electricity and the bill gets quite expensive in the summer months and sometimes I fall behind. I continue to pay the past due amount once the bill gets behind and I always am making a payment of some sort every 30 days. At times I request a short extension which I used to be able to do on their web site.

All of a sudden in October the feature wasn't there so I called the customer service line. When making such a request online I was provided a choice to make arrangements for the entire amount or the past due amount. When calling the customer service line I ended up going through an automated system that all of a sudden said your request for extension has been granted and you will receive a copy of the agreement in the mail. Well I never received the copy and I never knew exactly what I agreed to. I made sure to make the past due payment as I had been for a few months well before the anticipated, extended due date which is usually 10 business days past the original date.

Twelve days later they showed up and turned off my electricity without warning with my wife, her mother and a 5 day old baby at the residence. When I called to ask what was going on they claimed I did not live up to the agreement made over the phone and therefore turned it off. They said to turn it back on it would cost me the past due amount and deposits totally nearly $2000.

Are they NUTS? I told them I should not have to pay a deposit because I had been requesting payment extensions for the past due amount and been adhering to the terms of the agreement for months now and was quick to point out that I did pay the past due amount shortly after the initial due date. The only money I had in my account was for rent. I was able to get them to turn on the electricity for the remaining amount on the bill at that moment, $565 but they indicated they would be charging me $125 to reconnect the same day on the next bill and that the deposit (equivalent of 2 months average bill amount) would be due across 4 payments (in addition to my electric bill) monthly. Let's just say my rent was late for the first time in 15 years because of this and I'm about to have one of my vehicles taken away since I can't make the payment. This is a BS practice and I feel I was taken advantage of since they had come out and cut off the power with an attitude like, what are you willing to do for us to turn it back on?.

Business practices like this are pathetic and my family was clearly taken advantage of. Like I said before...all of this with continuing to make payments every month, just falling a bit behind on the balance, which is easy to do here because the high cost of power in the summer months.

Late for my rent for the first time in 15 years, trying to improve credit to purchase a home and instead I may have a car taken away for a non-payment this month. Power was turned off on Halloween 2 hours before kids returned from school and was turned back on just before dark. The stress and the immediate financial impact has been unbearable...and to top it off I'll be out of work on 11/30 and all attempts to find a new job have failed thus far. My financial situation was just starting to improve and APS started a path of destruction for me that will take years to fix to be eligible to buy a home. Thanks alot idiots!