Alliant Energy
reviews and complaints

My elderly mother hadn't received her electric bill a week before it was due so we called Alliant Energy. Someone gave the rep at Alliant Energy the wrong address (my moms), so Alliant Energy disconnected her and hooked this other person up ( a month ago). While talking to rep, she stated problem was fixed and my mother would get a bill in February for January AND February! How is a person on a fixed income supossed to afford 2 bills at once? Rep said they won't change a late fee. I don't see where this is fair!

My Mother passed away unexpectedly at a young age, leaving me Administrator of her Estate. When she passed away, her electricity was shut off at her home where she resided because it was in a relative's name. I needed the electricity on in order to clean, prepare the house to sell and keep the pipes from freezing. I called Alliant Energy and they would not turn the electricity on in my name as Administrator because I had a past due balance. In order to turn in on in the name of the Estate, they needed me to email them legal documentation that I was Administrator of the Estate. I emailed them the proper documentation and they said it would take a day to process after they received it. I let them have a week to get the information and I thought they would contact me or send back a confirmation email. I called them back and they said they never received it, despite the email being in my sent messages folder with the correct email address. I sent it again and waited another week. I still did not receive any confirmation, so I called them back. They told me that had received it, but that they could not turn the electricity on in the name of the Estate. If they were not going to turn it on in the name of the Estate, why did I have to send them the legal documentation and wait two weeks? We planned to have my husband turn it on in his name, so he called, they took all his information and all I needed to do was call and confirm. I called to confirm and they told me they could not put it in his name and that they could indeed turn the electricity on in the name of the Estate. After we sold the property, I called Alliant Energy to cancel utility services and transfer the electricity to the name of the buyer. They told me they did not have any documentation on file to prove I was Administrator of the Estate and could not shut the electricity off or transfer it to the name of the buyer. If that was true, then how and why did they have it in the name of the Estate? I could not believe what I was hearing. The buyer had already taken possession and was going to be using electricity that would be billed to my deceased Mother and they were not going to do anything about it. After being on hold for extended periods of time and using huge amounts of cell phone minutes, they finally confirmed they did have the documentation and that the electricity was transferred to the buyer's name. I wanted confirmation that this had been done by them providing me the name of the buyer or by them asking me the name of the buyer and they did not do either. This delay caused us to have to delay putting the house on the market by a month, paying a month worth of extra bills and could have caused the pipes to freeze because of the cold temperature, potentially causing expensive repairs. Not to mention the extra burden and stress on an already grieving child.

I contacted Alliant Energy about my time of day meter running when it should not be. The customer service rep told me I didn't know how to read the meter. HAHA The meter has a running total of kwh used and it has on peak kwh used. Quite obvious the on peak should not be running off peak. DUH Needless to say, I stopped the time of day service and am here to ask all that use time of day to monitor their meters closely.

My situation was resolved rather easily but I wanted to let others know what had happened. My electric and gas is combined on one account with Alliant Energy and the bill was due on March 25th. On the 19th I called to pay it and when I talked to a real human not a computer she said "how much of the past due amount are you paying?" I said I have no past due amount and she told me I was 3 months behind. I told her that i was not behind but I have all the bank statements and confirmation numbers from them each time I called. So she put me on hold, came back and said "I see you have made payments but they have not been applied to your account" and then she explained the reason she said 3 months was because my Feb. bill was not applied to my account I hadnt yet paid March bill(it was not even due until the 25th) and they just did a reading for the April bill which will be due April 25th. Anyways she said she will have this looked into and someone will contact me within 7 -10 days. 7-10 days for a mistake that THEY made and I have proof that I did everything right. Does not seem fair, but fine. Well it was only 4 days later and someone did contact me asked me if I knew such and such person I said I did not and she told me that was where my payment was applied so she would fix it and that I just pay $186 a month. $186 how do they know how much it will be every month. Well apparently in Feb. someone signed up for budget billing on my account(?). I didnt but maybe my wife did though they said they dont know who did it, it could have been anyone. And in Jan. I was given a special due date though there records do not show why or who requested it.

I realize a person reading this may say yeah right. Truth is I probably would have questioned how legitimate this complaint is 3 issues in 3 months and honestly special due date and budget billing is not a big deal. However after reading all the utility company complaints on here I thought I would put in my two cents.

As I said my issue was resolved very quickly and other utility companies may do things different but from the main excuses I got from Alliant Energy was that either there is a computer error with my account when they updated their systems in January. Or someone is calling in, without any of my personal id info such as ss# or account number etc, and changing stuff. So they completely admitted to being at fault but and I quote "there is not much you can do about it except to check your bill close every month. We are sorry"