Tampa Electric / Teco Energy
reviews and complaints

Placement of yellow plastic pole for gas line in middle of property. This was permanent placement started in January and was completed in February. This is my second complaint. I do not even use features in my home that requires the use of gas. the neighbor ACROSS the street has gas, but yet this was placed in my yard where our home was built in 2019. The older home built in the 50's-60's is where the gas was installed but this was placed in the middle of my yard preventing us use of parking and creating a safety issue when we try to mow our property.

My gas billis usually $ 68.00 tecco gas goes through my bio and decides t charge me. I am a sngle person, I use the same each month.

They target elderly single women,

Budget billing is a scam, thry want t pay the deferred balnce to get off it. Nothing budget about it. It 's a scam.

You are actually paying more than your bill.

They won't provide any information in writing. They say look at your bill.

Very bad reps. Long hold ffor a supervisor.

They are rippng off customers. Wznt to add payments to my bill to off deferrd billing. Total scam need to be stopped

Hello, I have a concern with how you do billing. Ive been having a hard time this year financially , what I don't understand is how you will cut someones service off over less than $60, then charge at least that and make costumer miss a whole day of work to get restored . That seems pretty damn ruthless. Cutting a costumers service over less than a $65 bill, then screwing them over to get back on. No compassion here , I would understand if bill was over hundreds late. But to go through all of this over $60 seems just plan messes up. I guess when you have monopoly over an area you do whatever you want. Great business moto.

I have called twice and was placed on an extended hold both times. The first call disconnected and the second call I hung up after being placed on a second hold for an indeterminate amount of time. The people who work at this company are of minimal help. In between the first call and the second call, I set up my account online myself, and the following day received and email stating my apartment did not have a meter. I have power and so I believe this was incorrect. I have had a poor experience and would recommend avoiding this company and its employees as often and frequently as possible.

I submitted a request to start service on line, I called customer service just to follow up and make sure that they had all my information. I spoke to Angel

he confirmed that the request was in the system date and address.

I then asked him what my deposit would be, he said that he would have to

have another department give me that information. HE SAID IT WOULD BE A DIRECT TRANSFER AND I DID NOT HAVE TO WAIT (LIE) he transferred me

not to a person but back in the " Queue " I waited for one hour and 45 min

no one picked up, but they are so quick to take your money. Customer Service

Is terrible!

My aunt is 92 years old, and obviously on a fixed income. Her bill has tripled in the last 3 months despite doing everything to use less power. She lives alone and keeps all lights off and her bill is $370.00. Ridiculous! How can you people sleep at night knowing alot of the elderly cannot afford this hike for any length time let alone when the heat is so bad. They are dying because they can't afford to run their a/c. Read the damn meters and credit people immediately. If my aunt has any health issues due to your greediness, I will sue.

Hello my name Romel Elien, I just moved here to Tampa with my family (wife and kids). We are homeless and now we working on getting a place and I applied to tech for electric, a Customer rep called me back his names Yuan.. instead of helping me he was making it difficult and making fun of my living conditions.. a person struggling to put food on the table to feed his family

My light bill has been extremely high over the past 4 months for a house that’s only 1306 square feet. The bill is so high I’ve been scrambling to get the money to pay it. so naturally I have had to pay it late so Teco charged me another deposit of $300 out of nowhere and that deposit obviously increased my bill because the payments had to be and added to my regular monthly amount. Finally I paid my last deposit amount and I know my bill should be $100 or so less each month……. Nope Teco finds away to get the same amount the following month. How can people afford to keep the lights on and buy food to feed their family.

We need help with these excessive charges

Received email notification (time stamped at 11:19pm on 7/20/23) stating my bill will be going up an enormous amount and the 1st new payment is due in less then 2 weeks on the 1st. This is after they just raised the amount in June 2023. Since TECO is a monopoly, we have no other avenues to pursue.

After calling on 7/21 for an explanation, line disconnected after being on hold 31mins. Sending this complaint in a desperate hope of assistance.

Thank you

Diana Rodriguez

I have tried to contact TECO multiple times by phone.

Hold time are over 30 minutes and I can not wait beyond that. Also online chat is disabled on their website and email is locked. I am also trying to get my deposit back which according to their website should be automatically refunded after 23 months of bill paid on time. I have a history of over 4 years of on time auto pay. I would like my deposit refunded as it is several hundred dollars. TECO customer service access is the worst I have experienced in my entire 61 years of life meanwhile paying exorbitant amounts of money for electricity and gas.

In March 2023 to the current date of June 2023. Some person named Maria has been calling me repeatedly to threaten disconnect of electric service if a payment is not made based on their overbilling. After receiving my deposit for on time payment. They failed to send two statements which were overbilled amount since was on Budget Billing with Cost Adjustment. Each month is no longer 75 to 89 it is over 160. This happened after they removed Budget billing from account without my consent.

We live in the Wellington Manor subdivision in Lutz. Enough is enough. Over the years outages were frequent and our small subdivision has always been the first or only sub around us to lose power and last to get restored. Why is this so? The past few months have brought this to new heights. We’ve had two big outages this week alone, both for several hours. It’s always the same reply, with the canned 4 hour ETR. The website stinks, and trying to report an outage in the dark can be frustrating for a senior. Calls are even worse. Between hold times and losing the call I’m not sure which is the lesser evil. I’ve had to discard food twice this week for fear of contamination. We have a senior guest staying with us who is handicapped & not comfortable with the landscape of our home, which is a recipe for disaster. One of our neighbors indicates trees on Newberger road are the culprit, and a fix is forthcoming but what assurances do we have this is a long tern solution to a very long running problem? We’re close to deciding on an alternate power source, and I’ll spread the word if this is not fixed once and for all. This will mean $ loss for TECO, not to mention the poor reviews. I kindly request some positive answers at this point.

I just moved and my first bill was due 05/12. They shut down my power on 05/25. ONLY 13 days late. I probably missed the bill since I just moved. They didn't try to call me or anything, just shut down the service. Apparently they sent final notice which I never received. All this happened within 13 days? How do go from late to final notice to disconnect in 13 days?

I purchased my home in 1999. Initially service had a significant number of brown outs or service interruptions. Always seemed to occur prior to major storms not during. I have several issues where surges have destroyed items connected inside my home. From 2012 to 2019 I rented the home and live in the river Watch community where none of these issues existed.In 2019 I returned to my home and quickly discovered nothing has changed with the quality of service offered from Teco. Last year before 8 hours before the hurricane was to enter this area our service went out for days. In fact we were one of the last areas to have service returned.

Within the last week we have experienced 4 brown outs and 1 power outage. While Teco spends money broadcasting TV commercials, has had significant price increases over the last 25 yrs, they have totally failed to address our issues. It's time to hear your response why you are unalbe to provide dependable service.

Robert Hudson
10432 Ashley Oaks Dr
Riverview, FL 33578

I am a customer since last 21 years. Recently (April 2022) I got 16.8 KW solar system installed. Since the start my bill is showing very little units exported compared to actual production. Upon talking to Tampa Electric, the representative is totally ruthless and doesn’t want to understand my problem. Instead of paying minimal charges of $30-40. I am still paying $200-400 monthly. Which doesn’t make any sense for such a large solar system.

Budget billing was supposed to help and in the end you end up getting screwed and owing way more money than teco makes you aware. Why would they continuously charge you less than what’s owed only to charge you double to make up for it months later. Now we are $500 behind on the bill if I choose to opt out of budget billing. This did not help in any way.

I've been a customer since 2019 my bills always been about $120 until July when they raised it to $184 citing raising gas prices. I was never told about the deferred program properly during the July call about the raise the employee explained it to me that basically I was going in debt and they'd charge or sue me later for the remainder it wasn't really a low income program like I thought so I told her I can't be sued I'm disabled on SSI. She told me about another program to give me longer to pay without penalty and apologized for it not being explained to me.

After paying $180 for merely 2 months my bill raised again to over $300 this time and when I called to ask whynit raised again when gas prices went down and I was using less electric than the years before they cited it was to help pay off the deferred balance. I told them again I'm a disabled mother of 2 on SSI my total monthly income is $841 and my rent is $795 I don't have anything else to give them I'm going in debt despite paying my monthly bills on time. They told me they can help by getting money from charities in my name to pay off my bills and catch me up so I agreed they told me they'd call me back within 48 hours with details about what was paid what's left over and make arrangements for it but nobody called back. I called yesterday only to be hung up on.

They didn't get me any help from charities if they did they pocketed the money and didn't remove the balance but what they did do was removed me from the deferred program and charged me an entire years electric bills due by December $1381.07 again I only make $841 and it was to my understanding that I would be removed if I got approved for charity help which I should have because I never use charity and I'm over 800% below the poverty line! The more they offer me help the more expensive scams they keep handing me. My family is about to be homeless at Christmas thanks to tecos help and all they can say is sorry thanks for being a customer! I told them I was concerned about this very situation happening and they promised it wouldn't happen they would make sure I'd get the help I need.

If my family ends up homeless because of teco we will be moving to a tent on their property with a sign saying ask us how teco ruined our lives and destroyed our family! This is ridiculous I pay my bills every month now I'm facing getting it shut off which will get me kicked out of my home because they want to charge me a years worth of electricity in a scam! It's very clear the company listened to the recorded call in July and targeted me after hearing they wouldn't be able to go after me for more money after I'm not a customer anymore so they set out to get as much as can which only screws us both in the long run. I've been a loyal customer they aren't even treating me like a human being. I'm seeing other people on the program having the same issues they need to be held accountable for taking advantage of their poorest customers during this time with Ians destruction, inflation, holidays and everything else people are tapped out they need to have more respect for the people who have kept them running for 120 years! The bills in pdf form it won't allow me to upload it but I need help. They need to find and explain what happened to the charity money they took out in my name that was never used for my account balance.

Someone has dropped the ball I am afraid. I signed up for budget billing obviously to ease the ups and downs, as was the purpose. Now, apparently due to no fault of mine, I received an email that my new monthly payment will increase almost $170.00 a month to negate my deferred balance.

On March 11, 2022, my budget bill amount was $193.00. Now in less than a year it will increase to $456.00! An increase of $263.00 a month or an increase of almost 140%!

Budget Billing has now had the exact opposite result than was expected or promised by TECO.

This is not to mention the horrible timing as prices soar! I know TECO is not exempt from price increases either, however, a reputable or properly managed company should have the foresight to manage these problems and definitely not pass them on to their customers! I understand a reasonable increase, even though it will be the 4th this year alone, however 140% is very unreasonable and unresponsible.