Energy Sales Scams

Can’t believe I made it all the way down to here. Thanks for the heads-up, guys, at least I know what to do with door-to-door sales scammers right now.

I don’t know which position I’m in right now. I moved in to an apartment with a friend of mine three years ago when we were in our second year of college. Not long after we signed up for the hydro bill under her name, this guy came knocking on our door. I don’t remember what the exact scenario was, since I was only 18 at that time, but I remembered him saying about fixed hydro rate and stuff like that.

If anything, my friend must’ve signed the contract. She moved to another country soon after and I received a call from Universal Energy. They told me my friend would be billed up to $600 in legal fees and I told them there was nothing I could do. I don’t remember how they talked me out into it, but I agreed to continue her contract to save her that “legal fees” in case she came back.

Biggest mistake I made, I think. Now that I’ve moved to a house with a friend and don’t need to have my name under hydro anymore, they’re harrassing me instead, stating that I(!) have to pay those legal fees for terminating the contract, unless I find someone else to finish off the contract.

Maybe I should just tell them that I’m going outta the country for a few months (which is true anyway, except I’m not really finishing this off properly). Is that a good idea?

Minty: We’re not lawyers, so we can’t really provide any advice (would you really trust legal advice from some anonymous guys on the Internet anyway?).

Maybe ask them to send you documentation proving you owe the money or talk to Ontario hydro and see if they have any suggestions.

My understanding is you *CAN* make legally binding agreements over the phone (they record the conversations in case of dispute). That’s how people change long-distance providers and whatnot.

I wouldn’t advise fleeing the country and leaving it unresolved unless you don’t mind getting hit with a surprise at some point in the future…

I was sure that signing the contract with universal energy will decrease my monthly payment but the reality is different and now I been told about “smart Reader” that will take place in 2 years and only than I may be paying less.

We have exactly the same door-to-door tactics used in Australia!

..and when a phone salesperson just wont’ take the hint that I’m not interested, I just put the phone down and go back to the washing up, or whatever, only takes them a minute or two to realise that they are wasting their time, not mine anymore…!!

sarah robbins you should reasearch alot more before oping you mouth because you oviously didnt even lission long enough to know that your knew hydro metre is called a “SMART METRE” and it charges you different fee’s for different times of the day such as you will have to pay almost double for ur hydro on on peak hours than off peak hour

Thanks for the advice, Mr. Cheap =), although I’d to leave town in a hurry to see my Mom. I decided to leave the matter unresolved, simply because I’d changed my first name a year and a half ago and Universal Power still had my old name on record. On top of that, I don’t need my cell since I’m outta town, and I won’t be coming back till next year. Universal Power will probably (and hopefully) have given up on me by that time. There’s another solution outta this too, as posted by Mrs. Mustard. I’ve put the link on my name. It seems a few of you here were there before as well.
Thanks again for the “legal advice”, lol, I do appreciate your effort in helping.

my husband signed with superior energy 2 of our blocks in montreal and when my bill came i was crying because it was so high so i called them and they said if i wanted to cancel it would cost me 18,000.00 thousand dollars and the lawyer fees i said they were just scamers like there sales person door to door but my husband did not understand all the contract so when my husband told the saleperson if he could cancel he said no problem but not telling him that there were these big fees to pay so i had called serveral times to them but don`t even want to answer they just said well your husband signed even explaining them i was a mother of 5 kids and i was not working the bills were to high i live with revenue they did not want ot understand so if there is someone out there that reads this give me a hint to do something i know all my friends say go to the lawyer i have no choice to do so because superior energy are scamers they are so evil that they should pay for all the pain they give to people but the best part is that i had told them that i wanted to speak to the sells person they said it was private information so they scamed us good they will for for this i can`t let it go like this .

Funny, the same thing happened to me last month, as described in your post. I had encountered the “energy resellers” before, but this guy started out with “I’m checking to see if you’ve received your discount yet,” not anything about signing a contract with an energy reseller. He even had prominently-displayed invoices from Enbridge (my regular provider) giving me the impression that he was from them.

I consider myself to be fairly scam-resistant, but on this occasion I had actually given him my account number before I had clued in. Even after he brazenly handed me a contract to sign, assuring me that it does not say what it looks like it says, it took a moment to fully realize what he was trying to do. I should have told him what I thought of his outright deceit, but I guess I’m just too bloody Canadian. 😀

I phoned Enbridge first thing next business day, and confirmed that no changes had been made on my account, and made it clear that I didn’t want any changes made. I’m waiting for my next bill to make sure nothing happened.

In January, I had a man come to my door, saying he was from Toronto Hydro, giving refunds for Smartmeter installations. He asked to see my Hydro bill and I naively gave him my bill. But then he asked me then to sign for the refund, and when I asked to read the paper first, he said I couldn’t! He said he would only give me a copy if I signed it first. From my glimpse of the paper, it definitely did not have Toronto Hydro written on it so I told him I refuse to sign it. He argued with me, and then got aggressive and took off with my Hydro bill! I called Toronto Hydro the next day to inform them that someone/company had taken off with my bill, and to confirm that no changes should be made to my account. Toronto Hydro said they cannot change my account number, nor be responsible for supplier changes.
I thought everything was ok, since I didn’t sign the paper and got my next Toronto Hydro bill as normal. Then in my June statement, it said that my new energy supplier was “Universal Energy”! I just received a letter in the mail on July 16 from Universal Energy, thanking me for signing up in JANUARY for a 5 year fixed contract! I immediately called UE, and they informed me that they have my signature on a contract, and a recorded telephone call on Feb 2 confirming my agreement with the contract! I advised them that this was obviously a forgery by their shady salespeople, and checked my cellphone bill for Feb 2 which showed NO phone calls in/out that day! They advised that I must’ve agreed to the contract because they had all my information including my supposed email address and my supposed telephone number. When I asked them to confirm this personal information, it was all incorrect! I asked them for a copy of this supposed telephone conversation they had with me. The representative listened to it first, and said that it actually did not sound like me, so he wouldn’t bother sending me a copy(!). His solution was for me to fax them my government ID so they could verify my signature on the contract. But if they have shady people who would forge the signature in the first place, I do not feel comfortable giving such a company even more of my own personal information!
I have filed a complaint with OEB regarding this forgery. How do I fight such an outright lie? Is this identity theft?

isg energy is SCAM
universal is a SCAM
ALL OF THEM ARE A SCAM
to get out of the contract is very easy,just disconnect service,get the service in somebody else’s name for 1 month billing cycle,then get it back in your name
it knocks these scam artists right off your bill

Andrew Steele

The Ontario Tories’ leadership race continues to get more divisive.

The latest salvo is an anonymous attack on Frank Klees from quarters unknown, under the psuedonom “Tory Detective.”

The allegation is a serious one: that Mr. Klees is on the board of a company fined $200,000 by the Ontario Energy Board for making false and misleading statements.

Mr. Klees was considered the best performer in the leadership debates, a wily blend of Brian Mulroney and Ernie Eves. He’d better keep it up. It will take every ounce of Irish Blarney and double-E slickness he can muster to explain away these claims.

The e-mail read as follows:

From: Tory Detective

To: [email protected]

Sent: Sat May 30 22:24:05 2009

Subject: Frank Klees: Business Experience & Judgement? Uh oh….

Someone is walking the walk, but not talking the talk.

Frank Klees wants Ontario PC Party members to believe that he should be elected leader due to his “business experience”. But it looks like Frank’s business experience may not be quite the positive attribute he once thought it was. And judgement? Well…

Frankie sits on the Board for Universal Energy Group and is a member of the Audit Committee for the company. He even chairs the Compensation and Governance Committee.

As reported by the Toronto Star earlier this year, that same company – Universal Energy Group – was fined $200,000 by the Ontario Energy Board for making “false, misleading or deceptive statements to consumers.”

A copy of the order (which isn’t the first time) can be found here.

And another one in April (wasn’t there a Leadership going on then?).

And the people are some angry. Victims of the “Universal Energy Scam” can be found talking about their experiences.

…

But Frank doesn’t just sit on the Board. Universal Energy CEO Mark Silver, through his company, OPTUS Capital Corporation, made the single biggest donation to Frank’s campaign: a whopping $34,000 – about 20% of his entire campaign.

Frank’s campaign even reported the donation in the real-time donor disclosures to Elections Ontario.

Wow. Frank’s “business experience” seems to entail managing an energy company ripping off old ladies door-to-door. Judgement, indeed.

Hope you find this enlightening.

you are being so screwed if you have a supplier.

let your contract run out

if you have a contract,put your service in somebody else’s name,and it falls off

We also just got a rebate cheque for 29 dollars from Just Energy on March 5th. We have never dealt, let alone heard of this company until I just looked it up and was hit with link after link talking about scams. My wife contacted our hydro company who informed us that we are no longer with them. She then contacted Just Energy in Mississauga and was told that we had indeed signed a contract. My wife asked the know who signed it and was told that was signed by a gentleman who lives across the street from us and that he indeed signed a contract for his own residence 2 years ago and there must have been a mixup. I don’t buy this excuse. She told us not to cash the cheque and that they will have to do some further investigating. What I don’t get is that we have been dealing with our hydro company even up until the last few months. How could this mixup just happen after 2 years of the neighbor being with this company. My wife has threatened to contact the Ontario Energy Board and the Police Fraud dept. and has given them 5 business days to resolve this matter in Writing. So Mike, I think you also have some investigating to do…DO NOT CASH THAT CHEQUE!!!

sherry,all you have to do is change the name on the bill,and Just Energy falls off of your bill,and they cant do a thing about it.
if the bill is in your husband’s name,change it to yours,or vice versa

as for nasurj,i guess he didn’t read my comment on how to cancel out

nasurj,that 60 days notice means nothing.

once your name is not on the service,the supplier gets knocked off,period.
you are not obligated to notify the supplier of disconnection of service in your name.

this isn’t rocket science.

There were lots of energy scams coming out just before the price of natural gas fell. They must had known the market and took advantage of it… as well as the deregulation of the industry here in BC canada. I almost went for the scam… being told that gas prices will continue to rise!!!!! which they knew it would be dropping.

I don’t know where you received your information but the representative from Just Energy informed that if I tried to cancel our contract we would be charged approximately 900.00 cancellation fees. Has anyone tried changing their names on the contracts as was blogged previously. If so how did that work for you. We have already received notice of disconnection and have now had to pay a security deposit to hydro as our bills have more than doubled for the same service. As well I was also informed that there are no peak times according to Just Energy when it comes to useage?

Dear John, although I appreciate your intuitive insight into Just Energy-which I might add by reading your comments, A-you have either reseached this company very throughly or B-you are a commissioned employee of such. A little insight into my situation-my husband signed us up thinking that it sounded like an excellent idea-and maybe did not think into the future, which may very well change with smart meters and HST, but our bill that was typically 150-roughly every month went up anywhere from 250.00 in November-we heat with wood to 475.00 in January so tell me why I am not JUSTIFIED in complaining-crying is for babies and I never said I was the victim of anything. By defeinition a victim would be someone who has been affected in some way, shape or form and not by their choice-a tornado VICTIM does not choose to have their home destroyed by such. I was simply looking for some information that may help out my family as my job supported paying my usual bill not the one the eats up half my paycheck. So I would like to say thanks for the degrading email and I hope that you have made yourself feel really big and your feathers are preened-your type of help is not wanted, but if there is anyone who can answer my previous comment I would appreciate a reply. Sherry-wife and mother of three

I can’t assist in all cases where consumers are encountering problems with Direct Energy, but if you entered into a natural gas supply contract with Direct Energy / Enbridge Home Services in Ontario around 2002, and your contract was renewed without your consent, I’ve set up a free website (directenergyrefunds.blogspot.com) showing how you can potentially receive a very large refund from Direct Energy.

Wow. Interesting site and comments here. I just entered into an agreement with Just Energy the other day. I really don’t know what all the ruckus is about though. The gentleman who came to my door introduced himself, showed me his ID badge and even gave me his card and a brochure for the company. He said he wasn’t affiliated with Manitoba Hydro or Centra and we started talking. He did ask to briefly see a recent bill, which I admit I was a little hesitant in showing but did so anyway, just to see if I was eligible for the program he was promoting. He looked at the bill for maybe one second and handed it back. I asked how he could tell and he said that he needed to see the company name next to my gas supplier. If it had Just Energy or another fixed rate energy retailer then I wouldn’t be eligible because I was already enrolled. He told me about the program, showed me agreement and walked through it with me. It’s plain, simple english and covered everything he already said to me. Price stability which may or may not provide financial savings. Explains that I’ll be getting a letter from Centra confirming the agreement and that I can cancel 10 days from the date of that letter. Something that caught my eye more though was that the company extended the canceling period to 30 days after my first bill! There is no cost to cancel if done within that timeframe but there is a cost if I want to cancel afterwards (nothing new, Rogers does the same for my cell and Shaw for my internet). The cost isn’t even that bad either, MUCH cheaper than Rogers or Shaw. The agreement also gives me an option to lower my rate at some point during my 5 year term if just energy’s rate goes down lower than what I sign in at. I’m reading over my copy of the agreement right now and those are probably the main things. I was also given something called “Customer’s Bill of Rights” which has the companies contact info (which is in several places on the info I was given), it goes over, as the name suggests, my rights and that Just Energy is licensed and approved by the public utility board. Touching on that briefly, if this company was a scam then WHY would they be licensed by the vary board that is designed to protect customer’s like me? I would type out everything on the paper here but it would take too long and this is already long enough. Some quick points though it discuses the door to door guy and how he is supposed to conduct himself, go over the agreement, my right to cancel, more contact information for the company as well as for the public utility board. After going through everything and answering my questions, he asked to use my phone to call the companies main office to verify everything. They asked to speak with me (okay, the rep sounded like she was going to fall asleep) and went over everything AGAIN. After the call the guy summed up everything, asked if I had any other questions and that was it.

I’m laughing as I type all this because I read these other comments about people thinking they’re being scammed and I have no idea how that could be possible. I’ve read my agreement top to bottom, even the legal print on the back. I almost feel like I didn’t need to because both the guy and the rep went over everything multiple times. I’ve looked at the public utility boards website and have gotten information on just energy as well. The guy also showed me copies of releases from the Public Utitlity Board which admittedly I thought were fake but found that they were actually legitimate releases on the Utility Boards website open to anyone. Everything makes perfect sense.

Okay, forgive me for being blunt, but if you follow someone who knocks on your door, doesn’t identify themselves, or the company they work for, asks to copy your bill, among other ridiculous things that I’ve read in the above comments, then you almost deserve to be scammed. Use your head. Read every inch of your contract, ask questions.

The husband who wrote the first article used his head and put things together, whoever was at his door was likely a scammer. The guy at my door? I can’t in any way see him being a scammer based on everything we went through and the research I’ve since done over the last few days.

Something I forgot to mention earlier was that the guy also told me that Centra was offering fixed rate terms as well and that actually their term rates were lower than what his company was offering (why would a scammer tell me about my utility offering lower rates?). I asked why their rates were lower and he said that his understanding was that they were lower because Centra was to be able to adjust rates to soften the blow of fluctuating gas prices, something his company doesn’t do (more on this in a moment). The downside to Centra’s terms though was that there was only limited space, first come first served and they were actually sold out. How convenient, I thought. But I looked at Hydro’s site later and found that not only did they exist, offered a lower rate, but were also sold out. Regarding the price adjustments, the public utility boards site has a release saying that Centra can’t adjust prices anymore. My interpretation of this is that Centra can’t do anything to mitigate the gas rates if they spike. That kind of scares me, but I don’t think it applies to me anymore because of the agreement I’m in.

Now then, there was someone who posted earlier defending just energy and was therefore believed to be an employee of the company. So based on that, the same will likely be said about me. 😛 In my defense, I wouldn’t want to have the job of going door to door and dealing with people constantly paranoid that everything that knocks on their door (literally) is a scam.

Think what you want, doesn’t matter to me. You’re just words on my computer screen and in my experience with people and upset customers (present company included) is that they’re usually ticked off and feel cheated because they didn’t understand the program, promotion, contract, whatever, that they got themselves into, and, quite frankly, that’s their own darn fault. I learned this lesson the hard way with a different company years back. Anyway, I’m done my long rant.

Wondering if anyone has any legitimate information on JustEnergy Canada?????

This is horrible, I have just come to realize this scam on my bill .. Has anyone taken them to court???? What can I do about this , I want this contract ended asap, it has costed me thousands of dollars, very high hydro bills I cant afford, please help

Here’s to Jodie from the Wick… you go girl! I just got home from work at around 8:00p.m. tonite when I heard pounding on my front door. Thinking someone must be in distress, for why else would there be pounding on my front door like there’s a fire? I opened the door and here’s this 50 somethin’ shabby lookin’ guy with like an I-Pad lookin’ thingy with my name and address in bright BOLD letters across it. “Are you Duane he asks”? “Yes and what can I do for you, I replied”? It was then when he scrolled the screen down I saw JUST ENERGY. I looked this Lowlife right in the eye and sternly but politely said, “No thanks… I’m not interested”. I then went to close my screen door and this Scumbag starts pulling it open while telling me to just listen to him and that I am already with Just Energy and just listen to what he has to say. I told that piece of s*#! that if he didn’t let go of my door and get the hell of my property like now, it would be the last thing he says. It sure wooda of been nice at that moment to have a wolfdog like Jodie from Keswick. “King… attack”!! comes to mind. I guess the thing that enrages me the most about a magot of a company like Just Energy and the scum of the earth that work for them. Is the fact that this sort BS is even legal Canada & I’m assuming around the world as well. I mean aren’t there fraud squads who bust doucebags all time for coning the elderly out of their hard earned money? Why is this thievery tolerated on the masses? I’ll tell ya why. Because your government doesn’t care. Bottom line. These Lowlifes’ that come to our homes and try to con each and everyone of us. They for sure never go knockin’ on someone like Dalton Mc Guinty’s door. Or anywhere near his neighborhood for that matter. This not my first encounter with Just Energy. I got suckered by the same company about 6 yrs. back. Then, last year a woman came to our door for a 2nd time and well we’ll just say I was screamin’ NOOOOOO!!! as I narrowly snatched our Enbridge bill from my wife’s hands just as she was giving it to the Just Energy witch. Which of course was the same woman which had come the previous night when I was having a BBQ with friends and I told her that I was no longer interested in Just Energy or their so called savings on my bill and then she seriously said to me that she just needed to see my Enbridge bill. “No, no everything is fine.” “I would just like to come into your home and make a phone call to verify your account number that’s all… is that ok”? “and when the person on the other end says”, “Are you so & so”? “and then you just answer, YES ok and that’s it. But… guess what sucker? “You just authorized another 3 yr. contract with Just Energy… good for you i’s the best deal really you are so smart for doing this, and don’t worry”. No luckly for me and my wife I had already learned the hard and much more expensive way previously dealing with these con artists. So to anyone who has taken the time to read my rant about Just Energy do I need to say more? Please everyone try to educate everyone else that you can about this government accepted rip-off and offensive intrusions at our homes. The reason I ended up at this site was because Just Energy isn’t available at 8:10 pm on a Friday night for a wee chat about how when their next employee comes to my home and doesn’t leave when I ask them to. That they should bring a couple of friends with them. Anybody who is reading this. Just remember one thing. Word of mouth… only way to put this kind of BS in our society to bed for good.

I just signed an electricity contract a few months ago with Canada Energy Wholesalers, at a rate of 7.5 cents/Kwh. Obviously, I didn’t read the contract closely enough, because there is a seperate provincial charge on my hydro bill, called the ‘Global Adjustment’, which I can’t get out of paying. Since this rate has been running at about 2-4 cents per Kwh over the last several months, this brings my effective electricity cost to 9.5-11.5 cents/Kwh (I’m better off on TOU rates).

Is getting out of this contract really as simple as disconnecting and conneceting in another person’s name? If so, I could just use my room mate’s name instead?