Business ProfileforNortheastern R.E.M.C.

Northeastern REMC charged $220 to my restore electricity to my home after my autopay was declined due to my credit card being stolen. At 8:17a this morning, they email me to say that I need to call today before 10a ( 1 hour and 43 mins later) but do NOT say why in the email. I called at 10:10a 5 minutes after my power is disconnected and must pay the additional $220 to get reconnected to electric power. The $220 fee seems extremely unfair for a utility service that everyone needs (living without electricity is not an option!)Additionally, I don't feel the company did enough to reach out to me to get this issue resolved. There are multiple ways to contact people to help them avoid this HUGE fee, but I suspect that they want people to default to collect the additional money. What makes this even more unfair is that we have no choice in what company provides us with electricity. I'm forced to continue paying them and their outrages fees because everyone needs electricity. They took advantage of me and further victimized me after being the target of credit card theft! Its shameful!

Hello ******,

We are certainly sorry to hear about the troubles with your credit card and understand that can be extremely difficult. Our standard process is to contact members several times, with different methods to notify them of any billing issues that could cause problems on their account.  

In the case of an expired or invalid stored payment method,members would first receive a bill notification email and then they would get an email notification that they needed to update their payment notification after the saved payment method failed on the bill due date. To follow up on this email, we also make a reminder call the following day to the phone number on file. If a payment is not made on the day the account goes through billing,we remove the credit card from our system, and turn off auto pay.  This will prompt our system to add a delinquent notice to the account for all members with a 30-day past due amount at the time of billing. This generates a large red delinquent notice on the bill. Once a member has a delinquent balance, they will get contacted via email and an automated phone call to the phone number on file the weekend prior to the scheduled disconnect day listed on the bill . After that we also contact all members with a delinquent balance via email and an automated message the morning of disconnection letting them know of the last possible chance to make their payment. This would be the email you referenced above; this contact is our last-ditch effort to try to reach someone before a disconnect order is completed. If any contact was made up till this point all fees would have been avoided except a late fee on the original bill. After all the above attempts to contact our members, if a payment is not made, the service is disconnected. All applicable fees and deposit are required along with the total amount due to restore power for all members that are disconnected for non-payment.

We did confirm that all standard notifications for both a declined payment method, and the disconnect process were followed in your case.