Visayan Electric Company: What is going on?

Maybe not a lot of you might have known this, but I am a Filipina, a Cebuana to be specific.

Recently in my noise account I posted how worried I was because of our electric bill. Visayan Electric Company is our provider and is the only provider in Cebu City.

Our balance went up to Php 8000 or $160.

I was so worried so after my shift I directly went to one of our electric provider's service center. I was so shocked when I got there as there were quite a number of peope who stand in line considering that it was too early.

Since our place was hit by Typhoon last December 16 we did not have any electricity up until January of the last week. I was able to make up for my pending balance from November and here's the starting balance from February and March which is amounting to Php 2,587 or $51.74.

For me it is justifiable since this is for 2 months. We normally pay Php 1500 or Php 1800 more or less than these estimated amount per month but to be honest way before pandemic this is even way higher, when pandemic hit VECO increased our charges too. But we do not have any choice but just to pay because I was working from home and now they are doing it again.

Going back, getting such a high amount for 2 months well I just accepted it since we got electricity is February pass cut off. Do I have any choice? Does a lowly consumer have a choice?

But what is weird is come April and May if you check it is almost the same as MARCH bill which is actually combined for 2 months already!

It seems that there was no single changes on our bill at all for the next months and our usage is less or almost the same since the previous months.

I talked to different individual there and one customer mentioned that her normal bill is Php 400 but for 2 months now she is billed for Php 41000! Imagine that?! Php 41000 is $820! Compared to Php 400 which is only $4 in a month. Wew!

She is advised to just pay her usual bill though but of course she wanted to make sure this is not gonna happen on the third month because she is afraid that her electricity will be disconnected! Who would want to suffer with no electricity? Plus the fact that this is a monopoly where no other company operates here in Cebu City that could give us electricity.

Another scenario, I spoke to another customer and she said her bill went x2 this month and she wanted to complain because there was no changes on their usage at all!

What the teller advised her is that they have to hire an accredited electrician to look for any defect on the connection. Imagine?! They would ask the customer to freaking pay for someone in order to check their electricity line when it should be their responsobility to do so!

I have talked to a few individuals and a lot of them has the same complain. Other customers there even got their electricity disconnected.

Then whenever that you cannot pay the whole amount, VECO would just advice you to enroll in PAYMENT ARRANGEMENT. Even if it hurts to do so because I really feel like I should not but for the sake of my family I paid Php 3000 of our bill and then enrolled our account to payment arrangement. Surely on the next bill we will have 2500-2700 again. It will not decrease at all even if we do not use our appliances because we have already experienced it twice. We went to the province and brought the computer with me for almost 2 months. So the only thing that consumed electricity was our lamps. Unfortunately come our electric bill we are still advised to pay the same amount.

Small time consumers are very unfortunate. This is one of those times when I feel that it is not easy to suffer poverty much more because we have these companies who would take advantage.

Some complaints I saw on Facebook:

Article: XI as of 05.24.22

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