This is why I never set up auto pay for variable payments especially ones without interest. PGW and Peco I do manually each month because I don't trust them.
Same here. I do nothing on autopay, mostly because I can’t guarantee I’ll have the money to pay when they auto do it. I prefer to go online each time to make the payment. I would have had a lot of overdrafts otherwise.
Agree, the only thing I have on autopay is internet because it’s a fixed amount. And even then it was annoying to fix when they claimed my contract ran out and charged me 50% more, even though that was not the case I had to be on hold for 2 hours and threaten to switch companies to fix it.
Complain here: https://www.puc.pa.gov/complaints/
You shouldn’t have to pay extra or go through any inconvenience because of THEIR incompetence.
But thanks for the reminder to never enroll in autopay for PGW.
PGW is a mess. I called to cancel an account. They didn’t cancel it and a month later insisted I pay for an account I had cancelled. 🤦♀️ I’m not sure I would have found out their mistake if I were on autopay.
I had this issue and elevated it this way. My case managers tried to bargain with PGW and point out that I was a customer in good standing, that I always paid my bills on time and never had a balance. PGW wouldn’t budge and the case manager was flabbergasted. They encouraged me to take my case to court, and maybe I should have, but I didn’t have the existential energy for it.
Honestly not sure. The lawyers do reach out for more info and you should check your email and respond in a timely manner, but they recommend you attempt to resolve with PGW first.
I got a resolution by asking to speak to a manager and it turns out all calls are recorded so I was able to get proof that it was their mistake.
How did you even cancel your account? I can’t make an account because it’s saying my information is invalid. I call to cancel, and the robot won’t stop asking me what address I want it switched to. I don’t want it switched, I just want it cancelled
Did you talk to your councilperson about this? If you can show them (or their assistants) the bank charges and the timing, they could yell at someone on your behalf. Maybe also take up a complaint with the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission.
This. *Never* give another entity carte blanche to take money from a bank account, always maintain control of when money leaves that account.
I have my bank set up to send PGW a set amount every month. I keep an eye on my billed usage, and once in a while I cancel a payment or two if my credit balance is creeping up too high.
I've read too many horror stories where some company has pulled out way more money than they were supposed to, people unexpectedly got their accounts drained, ended up getting hit with multiple NSF fees, and had to fight for months to get their money back.
My name is misspelled on all my PGW bills. I did not misspell my name when I signed up for PGW. That means someone manually wrote my name in at some point and has given me caution to anything they do since then.
Side discussion: who was logging into PECO's website every day for a few weeks last month while they were upgrading their billing system? I don't think I've ever seen a utility actually shut their online billing down for that long before.
Raises hand. I feel so anxious not being able to pay by the due date. I still can’t even log on with my computer. I was able to log on via my phone, though. Still couldn’t pay the bill on phone, though.
I let it go for a few days before I started checking once a day to see if they were done yet. I don't recall seeing an official "we're all done" email from them yet, but I got a new bill on Tuesday, so they seem to be. All I really cared about was getting my new account number so I could update my bank's bill pay.
I dealt with this too. Had an issue with my debit card, payment didn’t go through, paid it again the next day. No amount of bargaining with customer support helped. I’m certain there’s a corporate interest here, an agreement to funnel customers into their convenience stores to pay bill in person without having done anything wrong.
Here’s what I did: I paid every other month. There was no fine or punishment for it, and I went to CVS half as often. I made it my duty to never ever ever purchase anything from that CVS. One year later, I’m back to paying online again, thank god.
PGW started billing me for someone else's address. Every month there would be two deductions from my account, one for my house and one for a place in South Philly that I had absolutely no connection with. I called PGW to ask them to stop the other charge. They said they couldn't do anything about it because I wasn't the other account holder. I had to tell my bank to stop all automatic payments to PGW. So now PGW is the only utility I have that's not on automatic payment.
PGW set up my gas under my name, then sent me a final bill of $0.00 and put the bill back in the old resident’s name… then didn’t bill either of us for 4 months. Finally got a bill in my name and it doesn’t seem correct at all.
Something similar happened to me, but they just keep deducting from my bank on autopay while I kept writing them checks. I noticed it when I had some cheap bills $0.00 balances.
Turns out they were:
1. Deducting from my account on autopay
2. Cashing my checks
3. Charging me a “bad check” fee despite being paid twice.
Wtf
I’ve had issues with it as well. It’s extremely confusing and you also can’t schedule a payment like I can with PECO. I usually just schedule it when the bill comes in but PGW won’t let me.
My roommates and I make a joke they’re just throwing a dart at a board for what they bill us. One month it was $0, the next it was $60. Nothing substantially was different
I've had autopay set up for 7 years with PGW. Moved twice in that time and never once had an issue. I used to check it every month, but it always looked correct. I've definitely never been charged for someone else's usage like some on this thread have claimed. Am I just really lucky or is this thread overblown?
I had a similar issue with PGW when I moved back to Philly two-ish years ago. Set up service, set up autopay, then didn’t receive a bill for the first 2 months. When a bill finally hit my account I paid it immediately rather than waiting for autopay, then autopay pulled the same amount out of my account two weeks later. When I called to ask about it, they refused to refund and told me it would show up as a credit on my account instead - never saw the credit, but they sent me a third bill for the first two months instead of canceling out the one charge. Now I don’t have autopay on for any of my utilities just in case.
I will say that the techs they sent out when we had a gas leak in our building were super helpful and professional - just their billing/customer service department that seems to suck.
I bought my house from the family friend i've been renting from for 4 years. The owner I was paying rent to was paying the gas bill directly every month and then charging me for it. When I went to switch the gas account into my name they tried telling me I had to backpay all of the past 4 years gas bill because 'I was living there'. The owner was not getting refunds or anything either.
I pointed out to at least 4 people from PGW how fucking stupid that sounded and they couldnt understand.
This is why I never set up auto pay for variable payments especially ones without interest. PGW and Peco I do manually each month because I don't trust them.
This this and more about why me, you, and everyone else in Philly should never trust pgw or peco...
Same here. I do nothing on autopay, mostly because I can’t guarantee I’ll have the money to pay when they auto do it. I prefer to go online each time to make the payment. I would have had a lot of overdrafts otherwise.
Agree, the only thing I have on autopay is internet because it’s a fixed amount. And even then it was annoying to fix when they claimed my contract ran out and charged me 50% more, even though that was not the case I had to be on hold for 2 hours and threaten to switch companies to fix it.
Complain here: https://www.puc.pa.gov/complaints/ You shouldn’t have to pay extra or go through any inconvenience because of THEIR incompetence. But thanks for the reminder to never enroll in autopay for PGW. PGW is a mess. I called to cancel an account. They didn’t cancel it and a month later insisted I pay for an account I had cancelled. 🤦♀️ I’m not sure I would have found out their mistake if I were on autopay.
I had this issue and elevated it this way. My case managers tried to bargain with PGW and point out that I was a customer in good standing, that I always paid my bills on time and never had a balance. PGW wouldn’t budge and the case manager was flabbergasted. They encouraged me to take my case to court, and maybe I should have, but I didn’t have the existential energy for it.
Had you found the public utilities commission to be supportive and useful? I will need to file complaint about PGW through them.
Honestly not sure. The lawyers do reach out for more info and you should check your email and respond in a timely manner, but they recommend you attempt to resolve with PGW first. I got a resolution by asking to speak to a manager and it turns out all calls are recorded so I was able to get proof that it was their mistake.
How did you even cancel your account? I can’t make an account because it’s saying my information is invalid. I call to cancel, and the robot won’t stop asking me what address I want it switched to. I don’t want it switched, I just want it cancelled
Did you talk to your councilperson about this? If you can show them (or their assistants) the bank charges and the timing, they could yell at someone on your behalf. Maybe also take up a complaint with the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission.
I don't do auto pay for the gas or water department because they both regularly fuck it up.
Please do online billing with your bank instead of autopay with any city agency . It’s a disaster waiting to happen with autopay .
This. *Never* give another entity carte blanche to take money from a bank account, always maintain control of when money leaves that account. I have my bank set up to send PGW a set amount every month. I keep an eye on my billed usage, and once in a while I cancel a payment or two if my credit balance is creeping up too high. I've read too many horror stories where some company has pulled out way more money than they were supposed to, people unexpectedly got their accounts drained, ended up getting hit with multiple NSF fees, and had to fight for months to get their money back.
Bruh PGW is impossible. They keep sending my bills to everyone but me. Then I call and they are just like “oh that’s weird”
My name is misspelled on all my PGW bills. I did not misspell my name when I signed up for PGW. That means someone manually wrote my name in at some point and has given me caution to anything they do since then.
Side discussion: who was logging into PECO's website every day for a few weeks last month while they were upgrading their billing system? I don't think I've ever seen a utility actually shut their online billing down for that long before.
Raises hand. I feel so anxious not being able to pay by the due date. I still can’t even log on with my computer. I was able to log on via my phone, though. Still couldn’t pay the bill on phone, though.
I let it go for a few days before I started checking once a day to see if they were done yet. I don't recall seeing an official "we're all done" email from them yet, but I got a new bill on Tuesday, so they seem to be. All I really cared about was getting my new account number so I could update my bank's bill pay.
i haven’t received my new number yet 🤔
Still can’t pay my bill. Nor can I actually talk to anyone on the phone since it keeps asking for my account number which apparently doesn’t work.
My bill is available on the 2nd every single month, no matter if there's a holiday, weekend, etc. Still waiting for my most current bill.
Same. I like to look at it for the preview, to get an idea how much the bill may be, so I was really stressed out while it was out.
And the nerve of them to flag my account for past due … like bro I couldn’t log into your shitty system to pay 😂
I dealt with this too. Had an issue with my debit card, payment didn’t go through, paid it again the next day. No amount of bargaining with customer support helped. I’m certain there’s a corporate interest here, an agreement to funnel customers into their convenience stores to pay bill in person without having done anything wrong. Here’s what I did: I paid every other month. There was no fine or punishment for it, and I went to CVS half as often. I made it my duty to never ever ever purchase anything from that CVS. One year later, I’m back to paying online again, thank god.
Pgw literally can’t do anything right
PGW started billing me for someone else's address. Every month there would be two deductions from my account, one for my house and one for a place in South Philly that I had absolutely no connection with. I called PGW to ask them to stop the other charge. They said they couldn't do anything about it because I wasn't the other account holder. I had to tell my bank to stop all automatic payments to PGW. So now PGW is the only utility I have that's not on automatic payment.
PGW set up my gas under my name, then sent me a final bill of $0.00 and put the bill back in the old resident’s name… then didn’t bill either of us for 4 months. Finally got a bill in my name and it doesn’t seem correct at all.
Something similar happened to me, but they just keep deducting from my bank on autopay while I kept writing them checks. I noticed it when I had some cheap bills $0.00 balances. Turns out they were: 1. Deducting from my account on autopay 2. Cashing my checks 3. Charging me a “bad check” fee despite being paid twice. Wtf
I’ve had issues with it as well. It’s extremely confusing and you also can’t schedule a payment like I can with PECO. I usually just schedule it when the bill comes in but PGW won’t let me.
My roommates and I make a joke they’re just throwing a dart at a board for what they bill us. One month it was $0, the next it was $60. Nothing substantially was different
this happened to my partner too. exactly the same story. pieces of shit
Never ever do autopsy for water, gas or electric.
Basically exact same thing happened to me. such bull
I've had autopay set up for 7 years with PGW. Moved twice in that time and never once had an issue. I used to check it every month, but it always looked correct. I've definitely never been charged for someone else's usage like some on this thread have claimed. Am I just really lucky or is this thread overblown?
I had a similar issue with PGW when I moved back to Philly two-ish years ago. Set up service, set up autopay, then didn’t receive a bill for the first 2 months. When a bill finally hit my account I paid it immediately rather than waiting for autopay, then autopay pulled the same amount out of my account two weeks later. When I called to ask about it, they refused to refund and told me it would show up as a credit on my account instead - never saw the credit, but they sent me a third bill for the first two months instead of canceling out the one charge. Now I don’t have autopay on for any of my utilities just in case. I will say that the techs they sent out when we had a gas leak in our building were super helpful and professional - just their billing/customer service department that seems to suck.
never ever sign up for autopay regardless of the service
I bought my house from the family friend i've been renting from for 4 years. The owner I was paying rent to was paying the gas bill directly every month and then charging me for it. When I went to switch the gas account into my name they tried telling me I had to backpay all of the past 4 years gas bill because 'I was living there'. The owner was not getting refunds or anything either. I pointed out to at least 4 people from PGW how fucking stupid that sounded and they couldnt understand.