re: Entergy customers see sudden 300 percent increase in bills

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Go outside and read your meter. Now go look at your bill which shows the last meter. If they are close, then you used the electricity. It is not freaking complicated. They can not make up numbers.

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You'd think it would be simple but one of their excuses for my bill being 7.5 times more than normal was that the past readings were what was off and this spike was caused by them finally getting an accurate read and just now catching up. Even their defense is that they can't consistently read the simple number off the meter.

2,000 kWh for a 4,000 sq ft house.

Either your house has a ton of energy efficency improvements, or, you run your a/c at like 80 degrees.

You paid 7.51 cents per kWh. With Entergy last month, I paid 8.77 kWh. Not exactly a massive difference. About 20 bucks a month. Plus, the time spent dealing with moving companies, research, etc.

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A 200K home in TX may have a property tax of $4,000. 

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My home in Breaux Bridge is valued around 175k. Property tax last year was around 375. Forget the mileage rates. First 75 or 85i is exempt.

Trust me though, I am not trying to say it is better here. Thanks for sharing all the info.

So they did were not billed for electricity they did not use. They were not overbilled. They will be allowed to pay it over over several months.

Bet nobody complained about the low bills all summer???

They didn’t give any kind of reason?

I remember the same thing used to happen with my water & sewage bill because they wouldn’t read the meter every month and when they finally read it I’d have to pay the difference.

Entergy won’t start rolling out smart meters until next year.

Next year? I've only lived in Houston 5-6 years and they were well established here when I first moved.

Do you guys have anything like Energy Ogre in Louisiana? It's a service that shops for the best rates. I heard about it on Michael Berry about 2 years ago and checked into it. They compare rates of about 40 "providers" in Texas. They all have different prices for KW hours. Energy Ogre compares the rates, locks me in for a year, and then switches me to a new provider if needed after 12 months. Our utiliy bills were cut by 40% last year. Not an exaggeration.

Reliant owns the infrastructure. If you have an outage or a problem, Reliant deals with it for all of the "providers". There is absolutely no difference in how you get electricity or how problems are dealt with.

If there is a service like this in LA check into it. They use your existing bill to calculate annual savings. Energy Ogre charges $10 month and we save 10+ times this each month. I can do the same thing on my own but for $10 a month it is not worth the hassle of having to deal with all of the different companies that sell electricity. Of course, since we switched our old provider Center Point is sending us a couple of letters a month, offering discounts and other crap to come back.

Entergy has the Monopoly in Louisiana, they have no choice in the their provider, thus the high bills.

Entergy loves to tack on fees for hurricanes. They get reimbursed by insurance and charge customers a fee each month for a decade for a hurricane.

In Houston, if you don't like your provider or don't like their fees you simply find a new one.

Many people in Houston have used Energy Ogre to shop around and find the cheapest plan but many of those have moved to Griddy now buying electric wholesale prices.

I find it a little cheaper and get better plans to search on my own.

With Griddy, use 2,000 kwhr bill would be around $165.

Energy Ogre has been mixed reviews. But Energy Ogre has been putting people on discount power which is who I have. But need to pay them $10/month.

My bills are a little cheaper than the energy Ogre plans plus avoid the monthly fee.