what a gas.
Peoples' Energy will no longer accept personal checks from me. My options are now cash (how exactly?), a money order, or a cashier's check. As if their exorbitant bills weren't hard enough to pay already.
Why did this happen? Years ago, I signed up for their automatic bill payment. This summer, I stopped it. Confident that I had no more services attached to that bank, I closed that account. Well, guess what? They still tried to make the automatic payments!
Two months and two "returned checks" later, I found out that Peoples' Energy doesn't even handle the automatic payments; it's all done through a service called "CheckFree." They informed me that I set up an account with CheckFree myself. Only, I didn't. I set everything up through Peoples' Energy's website. I even stopped it through their website. Not once in either of these instances did I leave their website. Their website told me I no longer had automatic payments set up. I was never even aware of an organization called CheckFree until last month.
So, let me get this straight: as far as I can tell, Peoples' Energy created an account with CheckFree in my name and without my knowledge. As far as I can tell, this is illegal. I don't know if they're actually informing customers about this, but they weren't three years ago when I signed up. Correct me if I'm wrong.
The end result is that withdrawals are being made in my name from a nonexistent account, and both companies have been telling me it's the other company's problem and they can't do anything about it.
Greeeeaaaat.
Needless to say, I've filed a complaint with the Illinois Commerce Commission, and sent something in writing to both companies explicitly removing authorization for any electronic transactions in my name.
After this, I finally got through to someone at CheckFree (after going through several sleuthing techniques to find their unpublished number), who figured out what's happening and promised to send a "good faith" letter to Peoples' Energy. Whether or not that will convince them to accept my checks or not is anyone's guess.
Take my advice: don't use the automatic payment service for your gas bills! As far as I can tell, they're still using the same process. They'll use illegal methods to impersonate you and hand over your bank information to a third party!
Why did this happen? Years ago, I signed up for their automatic bill payment. This summer, I stopped it. Confident that I had no more services attached to that bank, I closed that account. Well, guess what? They still tried to make the automatic payments!
Two months and two "returned checks" later, I found out that Peoples' Energy doesn't even handle the automatic payments; it's all done through a service called "CheckFree." They informed me that I set up an account with CheckFree myself. Only, I didn't. I set everything up through Peoples' Energy's website. I even stopped it through their website. Not once in either of these instances did I leave their website. Their website told me I no longer had automatic payments set up. I was never even aware of an organization called CheckFree until last month.
So, let me get this straight: as far as I can tell, Peoples' Energy created an account with CheckFree in my name and without my knowledge. As far as I can tell, this is illegal. I don't know if they're actually informing customers about this, but they weren't three years ago when I signed up. Correct me if I'm wrong.
The end result is that withdrawals are being made in my name from a nonexistent account, and both companies have been telling me it's the other company's problem and they can't do anything about it.
Greeeeaaaat.
Needless to say, I've filed a complaint with the Illinois Commerce Commission, and sent something in writing to both companies explicitly removing authorization for any electronic transactions in my name.
After this, I finally got through to someone at CheckFree (after going through several sleuthing techniques to find their unpublished number), who figured out what's happening and promised to send a "good faith" letter to Peoples' Energy. Whether or not that will convince them to accept my checks or not is anyone's guess.
Take my advice: don't use the automatic payment service for your gas bills! As far as I can tell, they're still using the same process. They'll use illegal methods to impersonate you and hand over your bank information to a third party!
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