FirstEnergy

They will accept a payment from you and update your account to reflect that payment. Normal and fine, right?

BUT if that payment was late, a few days after that, you will get a wierd notice that your account is past due. Hmm how can that be? Because they have decided that they want to get a security deposit from you to the tune of $228. Which is more than your monthly usage has ever even been.

You think, this must be a mistake! I never even heard anything about this. So you will call in hoping for someone to help you. Instead, you will be spoken to like a jerk by someone who has a bunch of their own children or partying going on in the background and even their other household members commenting on your situation bc this company cares NOTHING about your privacy let alone security of info and def zero regard for professionalism.

You will be informed that in the fine print this practice is completely legitimate. So you were told you were paying your bill before and after the fact? Well, they decided to undo that transaction and misuse those funds for a different purpose. I am not claiming to be an expert in finance law but ummm I am FAIRLY certain that luring someone into a financial transaction under false pretenses is a very clear case of theft by deception.

And misappropriation. I mean it is an odd presentation of misappropriation. But still. They are borrowing the funds and I didnt know they were going to do so.

If they had TOLD me first about the security deposit, okay. But this is done very intentionally with many, many paperless billing customers. Because they will use the old your bill with the security deposit was generated on X date and even though you hadnt seen that yet, you had the ABILITY to download it and see it. umm.

Shouldnt it be their responsibility legally to let me know that they are NOT going to pay my bill when the screen says monthly usage X dollars. And then you pay it and it says payment pending thank you. Amount past due $0. Then days later, suddenly your past due balance is back again and they have a weird thing that says you paid them a security deposit on a day when you were not even on their site.

If you think I must be leaving out some information or that this is not happening on a VERY large scale, read some ohio edison security deposit scam posts on all sorts of various sites.

Something MUST be done about this.

It is completely illegal. Fine print doesnt give a company permission to defraud its customers.