This week, CUB held news conferences across the state (Chicago, Rockford, Peoria, Alton and Champaign) calling on the General Assembly to pass sweeping reforms to protect customers from a wave of electric and gas rip-offs that we have seen in the market over the last few years.
These are some of the sad stories we’ve seen:
- In Skokie, a woman was on a plan that charged her double for electricity. “Grateful for your work,” she said, after we met her at a utility bill clinic and alerted her to the bad deal.
- At a utility bill clinic in Bethalto we found a consumer chained to an alternative electricity supplier rate that was at least 55 percent higher than the utility rate.
- A Chicago-area man saw his rate with an alternative gas supplier triple the utility rate, overcharging him by hundreds of dollars. “To me that’s price-gouging,” he said.
This is a significant statewide problem, and we need Illinois legislators to pass sweeping reforms to protect seniors and families from overpaying by potentially hundreds, even thousands of dollars.
The energy companies have a lot of lobbyists and money, but we have YOU. Please, send a message to your representatives: Enough is enough. Clean up Illinois’ energy markets!
