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"