Residents Struggling With Unexpected Charges On Utilities

MCNAIRY COUNTY, Tenn. -Some residents served by Pickwick Electric Company say they are seeing totals well above what they would expect to see after last month’s winter storm.

We reached out to the Pickwick Electric Cooperative for answers as to why they were seeing this sharp increase in money due.

Brad Howell, Vice President of Human Resources at Pickwick Electric Cooperative sent us a statement.

“During the extended outages caused by the winter storm, some prepay accounts continued to receive estimated charges even though power was out.
Once this was identified, P.E.C. stopped usage estimates and notified prepay members.
As soon as power was restored and an actual meter reading was obtained, the system automatically reconciled those estimates with real usage, and any overcharges were credited back to the member’s account.
Members were not ultimately charged for electricity they did not use.”

We met with three residents that had reached out to us.

They tell us they received a credit for some of the estimated usage, but not all of it.

“Everybody’s hurting including business owners. I mean this hurt everybody in this community,” said Jacqueline Mullins, a P.E.C. customer from Selmer.

One resident thinks local emergency management should have some sort of bailout fund.

“I just wish we had something in place for emergency situations like this for our most vulnerable residents or elderly people and these little young families who have never been through anything like this before so that their power’s not getting cut off at the worst time,” says Amy Wigginton, a P.E.C. customer from Corinth, Miss.

One resident even told us exact amounts of charges and credits to their account.

“During the 5 days we didn’t have power, I was charged 70 dollars and one penny on my account and they credited me 24 dollars and eight cents,” says Katie Emery, a P.E.C. customer from Crump.

Another viewer that reached out told us that they lost power on January 24 at 5:00 in the morning and power was not restored until February 4, a total of 11 days with no power.

They said they paid two installments of 39 dollars on the 23rd and 75 dollars on the 27th.

That family says their power has since been cut off and were told that they have an outstanding balance of 121 dollars.

Pickwick Electric Cooperative covers all of McNairy County, with portions of Chester, Hardeman, and Hardin Counties in Tennessee as well as portions of Alcorn and Tishomingo Counties in Mississippi.