How to complain about an electricity provider

Your retail electric provider is required to have a complaint process, and most disputes — a billing error, a charge you do not recognise, a plan that is not what you were told — are resolved there.

Do it in writing where you can, keep the reference number, and note the date. A written record is what makes the next step possible if it is needed.

Your Rights as a Customer, the document that comes with every plan, sets out what the retailer must do and how long they have. It is worth reading before the call rather than after it.

If the retailer's process does not resolve it, the Public Utility Commission of Texas accepts customer complaints about retail electric providers it certifies. That is the escalation path the certification exists to support.

Complaints worth escalating include being switched without your authorisation, being billed on terms other than the ones you agreed, and disconnection notices you believe are improper. Those are rule questions rather than customer-service questions.

A dispute about which plan was cheaper is not one of these. The regulator enforces the rules and the disclosures; it does not adjudicate whether a legal, disclosed product was a good buy.

The bill in dispute, your Electricity Facts Label and Terms of Service from when you enrolled, and any written record of what you were told. Between them those establish what you agreed to and what actually happened.

This is also the practical argument for keeping the three plan documents rather than closing the tab. They are the evidence, and they are much harder to obtain after a dispute has started than before.