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38,155 Views | 239 Replies | Last: 1 mo ago by YouBet
htxag09
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AG
I'd see what they do. They just locked me into a 18 or 24 month contract (can't remember now) for lower than I found on power to choose.
jamey
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People claiming EO gave them a contract higher than they found by themselves....


Are you doing the complete calculations using a years worth of usage per month to calculate charges at 500 Kw, 1500 and 2000, plus any service fees....etc to get a complete calculation like they do?


I have done the entire calculation before for multiple companies and its time consuming. It's doable just takes time with excel...well worth giving them 10$ a month to do it


It would be fraud imo if they were somehow not performing the calculations as advertised

DannyDuberstein
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Kenneth_2003 said:

Bird Poo said:

18.6 cents quoted today from EO. 12 month contract.

Over twice what I normally pay each month.
Ditch EO. I'm fairly certain they bias toward 12mo contracts. There are cheaper plans out there but you have to get beyond 12 mo. They believe they need/have to be changing your plan every 12 months to justify the fee you're paying them.


EO just locked me into 20 months
File5
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Got until September 2023 on 0.11/KWh... spark Energy. Dreading the renewal. Just can't believe 50% increases are even in play much less the minimum it seems. Thanks Joe and Putin.
jamey
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DannyDuberstein said:

Kenneth_2003 said:

Bird Poo said:

18.6 cents quoted today from EO. 12 month contract.

Over twice what I normally pay each month.
Ditch EO. I'm fairly certain they bias toward 12mo contracts. There are cheaper plans out there but you have to get beyond 12 mo. They believe they need/have to be changing your plan every 12 months to justify the fee you're paying them.


EO just locked me into 20 months



Look at your cancelation terms. Mine is 12 months but at $20 a month.

I think at some point over the next year energy costs will come down, the cancelation will be worth it and I get a new contract at a lower rate
DannyDuberstein
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Mine is a straight $225. But given how nuts things are, I'm happy with the rate given what is out there (14.6 500, 13.8 1000, 13.3 2000). New contract starts at the end of next week
jamey
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DannyDuberstein said:

Mine is a straight $225. But given how nuts things are, I'm happy with the rate given what is out there (14.6 500, 13.8 1000, 13.3 2000). New contract starts at the end of next week



That's not bad. I'm basically hoping to get a new contract in several months around that
BUwolverine29
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My REP exited the market. EO was slow to transition me and I got stuck with Reliant as my POLR and got charged out the ass for 10 days. EO then signed me up for a 12 month plan @ 16.9, 16.6, and 16.5. I check PTC.org today and found much better rates available albeit for a longer term.

I have now cancelled EO and signed up with the Constellation 36mo, $99 cancellation plan. I'll eat the $200 cancellation fee with my current REP and consider it a lesson learned.

EO is not worth their price in this environment.
topher06
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If your company exits (I assume you meant bankruptcy), they just end your contract?
LostInLA07
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AG
Yes and if that happens you are assigned to the "provider of last resort." Previously Reliant would honor whatever rate you had but with the recent huge jumps in electric costs they are just assigning people to plans on the provider of last resort terms.
BUwolverine29
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topher06 said:

If your company exits (I assume you meant bankruptcy), they just end your contract?

yes they sent out a notice and were out same day. REP's in general are low margin businesses so they tend to come and go quite frequently
Bird Poo
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What did you use to search rates/deals?
JobSecurity
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There used to be a website called awesomepowertexas that let you put in your monthly usage and it would run the calcs for you. I guess they don't exist any more.

It used to be more valuable when there was a lot of variety in the shorter contracts. Now most plans seem to have dropped the usage credits, tiers, etc and are just straight per kwh
BUwolverine29
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Bird Poo said:

What did you use to search rates/deals?

i just used the old Powertochoose.org site. If you type in your info/parameters, you can download an excel file (bottom right of page) to easily filter the plans. I filtered based on rate first, then considered plan term/cancellation fee. Wanted the fee to be low in case rates do indeed ever drop over the term of my agreement
drewser95
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JobSecurity said:

There used to be a website called awesomepowertexas that let you put in your monthly usage and it would run the calcs for you. I guess they don't exist any more.

It used to be more valuable when there was a lot of variety in the shorter contracts. Now most plans seem to have dropped the usage credits, tiers, etc and are just straight per kwh
I have used this one for the past few years. You can still enter your monthly usage, but you have to pay the $10(?) fee to see the list of providers.
https://www.texaspowerguide.com/
Texker
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BUwolverine29 said:

My REP exited the market. EO was slow to transition me and I got stuck with Reliant as my POLR and got charged out the ass for 10 days. EO then signed me up for a 12 month plan @ 16.9, 16.6, and 16.5. I check PTC.org today and found much better rates available albeit for a longer term.

I have now cancelled EO and signed up with the Constellation 36mo, $99 cancellation plan. I'll eat the $200 cancellation fee with my current REP and consider it a lesson learned.

EO is not worth their price in this environment.


Recent EO promo courtesy of Fox. No surprise they advocate short term conteacts but it's relatively easy to mathematically refute their contention. https://www.fox4news.com/news/on-your-side-navigating-elecricity-plans-sticker-shock
DeLaHonta
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drewser95 said:

I have used this one for the past few years. You can still enter your monthly usage, but you have to pay the $10(?) fee to see the list of providers.
https://www.texaspowerguide.com/
Or just click on the "database" tab and all the information is shown for free…
tmaggie50
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jamey said:

DannyDuberstein said:

Kenneth_2003 said:

Bird Poo said:

18.6 cents quoted today from EO. 12 month contract.

Over twice what I normally pay each month.
Ditch EO. I'm fairly certain they bias toward 12mo contracts. There are cheaper plans out there but you have to get beyond 12 mo. They believe they need/have to be changing your plan every 12 months to justify the fee you're paying them.


EO just locked me into 20 months



Look at your cancelation terms. Mine is 12 months but at $20 a month.

I think at some point over the next year energy costs will come down, the cancelation will be worth it and I get a new contract at a lower rate


I don't remember the exact rates but about a month ago I did P2C and EO. EO signed me up for a 12 month contract at about $0.05 higher than I found on P2C. The P2C was a 3 yr contract, but the cancellation was slightly more. The main difference was using the P2C contract would have saved me more than the difference in cancellation fees in the first 4 months.
Diggity
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just renewed with Reliant at 16.0/kWh for 24 months. Sadly, that appeared to be the best deal avail.
File5
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OOF!!!
CapCity12thMan
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where I am in Austin outside city limits but we get our electric from Austin Energy) we have no choice so we take what we get. That said, my highest bill in the summer gets to about $350 for ~3300 sq ft home. We keep our house 72-73. During the 2021 blizzard, it got to $375 with emergency heat running on the heat pump that whole week.

htxag09
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I don't know squat about how Austin Energy works but I don't see how they can have rates that low. And quick google shows they can't, they're asking for increases because they are operating at quite a large deficit at the moment.
CapCity12thMan
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Here are my rates since I am not in city limits, but rather an ETJ:



I guess what I am learning in hearing everyone complain is that Austin has low rates and I am lucky. Here are my last 6 mos bill amounts, which I am guessing is pretty cheap comparitively?

htxag09
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one MEEN Ag
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Just used TexasPowerGuide.com to find the best deal for me. $10 for access to 'all in' rates that does all the funky calculations REP like to throw at you. Found me a 'great' deal at 10.3 kilowatt hour for 36 months. $200 cancellation. All in rate would be 10.3+3.8cents+rando monthly charges of like $8. So 14.1 cents.

yay.
Diggity
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that's strange....the rates they showed me were definitely "all in"

sounds like a bug in his software. Might want to give him a heads up.
one MEEN Ag
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Diggity said:

that's strange....the rates they showed me were definitely "all in"

sounds like a bug in his software. Might want to give him a heads up.
Sorry, I done goofed. The rate was 10.8cents+3.8cents pass through for a rate of 14.6cents a kilowatt hour PLUS the 4.89+4.39 per month flat fee billing. Which gives a yearly average of 15.3 total cost.

His methods are the most all in. I just tried to break it out because people like that info and I wrote down the wrong number (10.3 instead of 10.8).

I did log into that energy provider without his autogenerated promocode and the plan I got doesn't show up. So he's able to get access to off market plans.

TommyGun
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That's interesting that some you are getting Energy Ogre deals longer than a 12 month contract. We contacted them earlier this week inquiring about a new contract and the rep we spoke with told us that their algorithms do not include contracts longer than 12 months. We have been out of contract since the end of May and EO kept telling us that they were waiting for a feasible deal and left us out of contract all during June. Well our June bill came in at $0.24/kwh so we found the best option available to us on Power to Choose and got a 24 month contract at $0.159/kwh. We probably should have acted sooner but I just figured I would let EO do what they're supposed to. In this case they failed us pretty bad and we paid almost $150 over what we could have gotten in a contract for the month of June. Our new deal is a $200 early cancellation so it was a no brainer to go ahead and switch with our two highest utilization months coming up.
FDXAg
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TommyGun said:

That's interesting that some you are getting Energy Ogre deals longer than a 12 month contract. We contacted them earlier this week inquiring about a new contract and the rep we spoke with told us that their algorithms do not include contracts longer than 12 months. We have been out of contract since the end of May and EO kept telling us that they were waiting for a feasible deal and left us out of contract all during June. Well our June bill came in at $0.24/kwh so we found the best option available to us on Power to Choose and got a 24 month contract at $0.159/kwh. We probably should have acted sooner but I just figured I would let EO do what they're supposed to. In this case they failed us pretty bad and we paid almost $150 over what we could have gotten in a contract for the month of June. Our new deal is a $200 early cancellation so it was a no brainer to go ahead and switch with our two highest utilization months coming up.


Same. I was told they only do 12 months also. I wonder if over the last month they are scrambling and now including longer-term contracts.

Your story is essentially what happened to me. Although I caught it right before my contract expired with Reliant say end of May. It took about 10 days for the plan I found on my own with another company to go into effect, but thankfully reliant kept me at my same low rate for those 10 extra days rather than putting me on a very high variable rate.

Energy Ogre doesn't have a good business model for this current environment and they are screwing over a lot of their customers. Like you, it was a no-brainer to lock in a multi-year contract immediately, even if the cancellation fee was fairly high. I will more than make up the cancellation fee amount just over these next few summer months when taking into account the super high rate that energy ogre was going to put me in on a 12-month deal.

Frustrated at myself for not keeping up in the spring with what was happening with the energy market. I could have been looking on my own back in early April and signed up ahead of time for a new contract for a couple cents cheaper per kWh. But the flip side is I'm glad I caught it when I did. Otherwise energy ogre was going to enroll me in a 18c 12 month plan. I was able to quickly find a 13.5c 5 year contract.
J.P. 03
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Any of y'all have any experience with a prepaid plan? Historically I've only seen those used for customers with bad credit, which means the rate is way too high, but the cheapest result for my zip code on Power To Choose today is actually prepaid plan from Payless Power.

Not only is the rate the lowest, but it's only a 12 month contract, and the cancellation fee is only $99. Prepaid sounds like a huge pain, but I might be willing to put up with it if it means not being locked in for 5 years.

Plan is called 12 Month Rate Locker-PTC if you're searching as well. Am I crazy for signing up for it in this market?
Dan Scott
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Natural Gas prices have been essentially cut in half but power prices are still high around .14kwh for 1 year. What else drives pricing
12thAngryMan
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Dan Scott said:

Natural Gas prices have been essentially cut in half but power prices are still high around .14kwh for 1 year. What else drives pricing
Futures still show $5.50+ for the majority of the next 12 months which is double what it was a year ago and for several years prior. Europe is thirsty for energy.
htxag09
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Tangent but I'm kind of surprised that in this market providers are pushing towards long term contracts.

I guess their thought is prices aren't going higher, and if they drop maybe people will forget and keep paying these rates or, at worst, pay a termination fee.

But pretty large risk if prices just keep going up and people are locked in at 3 year old rates.

In my industry, we're seeing the opposite. Literally none of my suppliers are doing long term contracts, every one of them are pushing short term deals. Not completely apples to apples but still interesting to me.
LostInLA07
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I'm sure the pricing is just based on what they can hedge cost fluctuations at.
redag06
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My electric broker just put me in an offmarket plan, 14.7 all in, 36 months, but they have 3 opportunities to readjust.
 
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