TONI LOFTUS AT ROCK ENERGY CO-OP Bullied us into a payment arrangement amount that we could not afford and shut our power off SOUTH BELOIT, Illinois

I don't even want to give a star for this review.  My wife and I recently moved back to South Beloit, Illinois from living in Kentucky for 2 years.  I was told that there was a $500 deposit on the utilities at my place.  This was figured by the highest amount of utilities paid at this residence in previous years.  I was told that the other option was a prepaid account.  I thought that was a great idea because I didn't want to get a huge bill all of the sudden and not be able to pay.  Apparently, my wife had a $450 bill from one of her previous residences that we didn't know about.  It had been 5 years since she lived there and had never received a bill from them.  After telling me this, accounts receivable told me that we either had to make a payment agreement for this or she would add this to my prepaid account and therefore put us in the negative, resulting in our power being shut off until the account was paid back into the positive.  So my wife tried to make a payment agreement with her for what we could afford for each month.  No matter what my wife proposed, they would not accept it.  They bullied my wife into signing a payment agreement that she knew we could never afford.  When we called about our second payment that was going to be late, they said if you break our agreement then I will put it on the prepaid account and shut off your power until your complete bill is paid in full and your account is put back into the positive.  My wife explained to her that we just could not come up with the money and we had just paid 2 weeks prior to this.  She just reiterated her previous statement about breaking the contract.

 So at 12:30 pm on September 19th, 2012, our power was shut off.  Our three small children are left with no gas or electricity for us to prepare a meal for them or us.  The children must take a cold shower in the dark now until I can get the $380.80 to pay the remainder of the bill.  I tried to present them with a doctors note saying that my 4 year old daughter needs the electricity on for her breathing treatments, but she said that she would not accept the note and if she did then I would have to go onto a regular monthly payment plan and pay the deposit, past due bill, and reconnection fee totalling $996 today as she just smirked with one of those looks like "what are you going to say now?".    So I say all this just to say that Rock Energy doesn't care that my family has to now go without electricity and gas for another two weeks until we get paid.  So I do not recommend using Rock Energy COOP for anyone.