Alectra Utilities

such a ripoff, they charge me more to delivery than the amount I use, and then when I called to reinstate Preauth because that's what I was told to do they gave me a hard time. but when they looked at my account and saw I did exactly what I was told to do they finally did it. then I asked when my payments would come out as I have to plan my bills ahead of time they answered with 'that all depends it could be this day or that day' so how am I suppose to make sure funds are available if you can't tell me when they will be taken out. oh but they are going to make sure to charge me fees if I'm late.

I like how Alectra transformed the old Powerstream to such a customer focused organization. I’ve always received fast response whether for billing issues or infrastructure projects.

I have given them one star because I'm not sure I can post the review without giving any stars at all but this is the absolute worst company, they don't get back to you, and the csr reps as well as those that they claim are managers are not professional. High on the list of horrible businesses.

This company is a joke. They have a monopoly in my town and charge whatever they feel. I will be taking them to small claims court and doing anything I can to cost them as much as I possibly can. Stay away and watch for charges you never agreed to. Will also be contacting the ombudsman

Powerstream was formed several years ago when Markham Hydro sold off its assets to private interests, a topic way beyond the scope of this review. As such they had to create a new company which was simply a "distribution" arm because they no longer own the electricity they are selling. Part of the selloff included the assignment of existing contracts for rentals (which they used to handle internally) to a third party firm. The third party firm they sold our water heater contract to tried to defraud us by charging us for a yearly service contract no one ordered. I do not mean to over-emphasize this, but it was quite an experience. When I called the third party to complain, they said they had a voice recording of a my wife agreeing to the service contract and therefore the case was closed. Except my wife was out of the country at the time. I hired a lawyer and got that fixed. Powerstream remains a very strange entity to deal with. Before writing this review I tried to call their main (published) number to talk to billing. No one answered the number. It rang and rang. After an hour of trying I gave up. I finally went to their web page and tried the "customer service" number which eventually got me to a real person. No explanation as to why their main number is being ignored. Stuff like that happens a lot with Powerstream. I once wrote them a letter suggesting there was a problem with our underground wiring because we had so many outages. They sent back a letter basically saying our wiring was fine and I did not know what I was talking about. Within a year, their PR office announced a multi-million dollar project to rewire our condo because the wiring was bad. It's that kind of organization.

BEWARE OF ALECTRA UTILITIES Recently we were over billed on our electricity bill with Alectra, which was unusual as it didn't reflect our usual monthly amount. Upon contacting Alectra they claimed that the overcharge is due to their "faulty meter" reading which has been "undercharging" us for the past year, and that amount is to cover the difference that was supposedly owing. As you can imagine, upon hearing such nonsense, we argued that IF the meters have in fact been malfunctioning and have been charging us the usual rate why has it taken them this long to discover the error, and why wait til almost a year before shocking us with a lump sum amount without any prior notification of such discovery. It's highly suspicious. They also said that they have went ahead to replace the meter, which we were not informed, nor have we been given consent to doing, to which they said that it wasn't their obligation to inform customers when/if a meter requires replacing every 12-years. We were really irritated at this point and argued that customer's shouldn't be paying for mistakes made by the company and from their "faulty" meters. They are essentially blaming the customers and shifting responsibility unto their own customers when errors have been made on their end of the company. IF THIS HAS HAPPENED TO YOU, DO NOT LET THEM INTIMIDATE YOU TO PAY FOR MISTAKES THEY MADE. Submit your complaints to the company, and to the BBB, Consumer Affairs, or OEB (Ontario Energy Board). I got a reply back from OEB and they are looking into this matter right now. Hopefully all this will be resolved soon. We brought up our suspicions that Alectra may be attempting to fabricate scenarios to justify price gauging their customers and recoup the ontario trillium benefits or the ontario electricity rebates customers have been receiving as assistance/aid/relief.

Think mailing a bill to where you don't live is acceptable notice to send you to collections. Garbage company run by incompetent people.

I don't understand why we have to pay wastwater charges more than the water charges. Just because it doesn't have have meter to read the wast water? It's ridiculous and rip off how they randomly charging so much for wastwater. Not all water that are consumed being wast. We are drinking, cooking, watering the garden so on. Also so high delivery charges.It should be mitered and governments should regulate it.