The Electric Billshock While Under Quarantine

I heard from my brother that some people are complaining regarding the electric bills of many people who are shocked as the amounts to pay went 3 to 4 times.

During these hard times, many people are unable to work due to the mandatory lockdown, and many has no salary to support themselves. Also, meter reading of power consumed wasn't done for April because of the lockdown. What is shocking is how the electric companies in the country has computed the consumption, and the amounts to pay.

Here, Meralco has explained the spike bills for May. PANELCO has also explained their side here after they were bombarded with a lot of complains from shocked people. Who will not get shocked? Even a house without no one staying there for a month has a bill consumed with a high price to pay. You can also check this story on YouTube, which the businessman had about PHP50k to pay with electric bills despite his shops beong closed.

Why is that so?

This is very unfair for the people who will pay something they didn't consume. Why do they have to estimate the consumption from January to March so they can come up with the consumption for April? Why don't they just come up with the last or previous meter reading, and the current meter reading instead of guessing or estimating how much to be paid. Even those who received their bills, haven't had meter reading yet.

Meralco's explanations are not even easy to understand. It seems it was made to confuse the people more. They are claiming it is fair when it is obviously unfair. According to them, it is also in accordance with ERC. So the Energy Regulatory Commission has some explaining to do.

System Loss

We have been paying for decades with the system loss. This is actually unfair for the consumers. Why do we have to pay the losses of the electric companies? It will even be a pain in the neck if we have high consumption. The more consumption, the more payment you will give for the losses of the electric companies. In fact, there are certain parts of the bill which are hardly understood. All we have to do is just pay. We even bear with their incompetence because of the bad service. Come to think of it, the power is sometimes intermittent. There would be power loss, and come back immediately in just 3-5 seconds. Power interruption is also frequent.

We actually deserved more. What we pay isn't what we actually get. Services should be given an attention. The costs is too high. We are even defrauded by these companies. We just want something better.