I would like to demand the end of bullying, unprofessional,illegal, intimidating collection tactics of Huntsville Utility

The company within the last year has had 12 complaints filed against them accusing them of wrongful disconnects, not reading meters properly(over charge consumers) unprofessional and illegal collection methods etc. This company serves as a bully on the block because they control all the natural resources(Gas, Electric, Water). This allows them to basically do what ever they choose to the public. For Instance, they are allowed to close out accounts after 4 days of your service being disconnected which forfeits your deposit and forcing you to pay another deposit. They are basically forcing the public to use their services. Its been instances with this company has sued a consumer only because he was (living of the grid, generator, rain water etc) and Huntsville Utilities sued the consumer. I have just experienced an issue with a employer of that company who contacted my landlord to verify proof of residency only to threatened my landlord to have his property seizedby contacting the city because we were living there with no electricity, water, gas etc thus forcing him to deal with his tenants or loose his property. How can a company be allowed to act in such a unreliable behavior with the public natural resources that people need to live? Are we going to continue to let a company decide whether we live or die? or decide on if we should loose our homes? Force us to make choices of rent and lights? Streets or darkness? We should have other options for our natural resources.. I would like to see a individual gas, water, and electric company. Giving the public the option of dealing with a reliable company. We as consumers have families and we sometimes fall on hard times so sometimes in life we experience set backs . With that unfortunately families are forced with decisions to be with out electricity for while, get behind on car payments, etc but we should not be forced by a public service company to obtain service from them if we choose not to. What about our civil liberties that our Government has giving us? Should a public service company be allowed to dictate if we should live or how we should live?

http://blog.al.com/breaking/2014/03/lawsuit_huntsville_utilities_d.html   THIS IS EXAMPLE OF THEIR BULLYING TACTICS 

Mike Smith 5 months ago- I wish I could pick my electric company! The people giving this company 5 stars have to be employees! Their customer service sucks! We were billed for 59,000 gallons of water! We have one bathroom and it's only 100 sq feet! We had two plumbers to come to check for leaks, no leaks were found! We also didn't cut the water off at the meter and mysteriously the bill is normal again! So our mysterious water problem disappeared on it's own! They denied faulty meters, estimated bills. We basically were told our bill, our reading, our problem! Melissa Ford Melissa Ford

Melissa Ford 5 months ago- This awful company is only a company because they are the only Utilities company in Huntsville!!! I wish i had a choice, They are crooks! $600 deposit??? That's a car payment or house payment!!! They removed my guarantor after a year of living in my home, not by his choice but theirs, just to ask for a $600 deposit a year later!!! May Huntsville build another utility company, smh...........

Stef Barham 4 months ago- Customer service is horrible. Everything they do is done on their time instead of what's best for the customer. They have fees for everything. The only thing they do in a timely manor and take your money. They don't deserve one star and the only thing keeping them in business is the fact they are the only utility company in this area.

Lindsey McDowell 9 months ago- If I could give 0 stars I would. As a new customer with Huntsville Utilities their customer service is awful and use poor business practices as far as their fees go when trying to set up an account with them. I requested to start service with Huntsville Utilities 10/23/2015. Myself nor my spouse were advised of the need for someone to be at residence when a Huntsville Utility serviceman came to the residence in case any amount of voltage was picked up on meter. In our case we were not at the residence when the 1st serviceman came and they allegedly picked up 12 volts and left residence without turning power on. So we had to call and request they come back out to attempt turning power on one more time and was advised a second $70 account set-up fee would be charged?!?! My rental company, myself and spouse had all verified all breakers were turned completely off on 10/22/2015. We have spoken to several customer service reps and supervisors regarding the second charge about how it feels in valid or in the least unnecessary and poor business practices to charge customers fees for a circumstance that was out of our hands and because we were unable to bear witness to the 1st attempt to turn power on and actually verify that volts were detected. Neither supervisor has made any attempt to resolve the issue and only quoted policies and indifference to obvious flaws in business practices and policies. One supervisor even went on to explain that those $70 account set up fees get pooled in to a lump sum at the end of each month and are then divided and paid out to all the service technicians but quickly tried to say that it just goes to maintenance on the vehicles. So I feel like service technicians are taking advantage of customers when they are not at their residences when service is attempted to be turned on and the service technicians knows that the customer would then have to request another service technician to come out thus getting charged the fee and that fee would in part eventually end up in their paycheck, thus again is why I've made several attempts to have the fee waived as a one time courtesy because we are new customers and are already paying the 1st account set up fee and feel the 2nd is highly unwarranted and a show of poor business practice but they wont budge on the charge. Horrible way of doing business but they have monopoly on the utilities here so customers have no choice and they know it and get away with erroneous fees. So the lesson is here folks no matter what you got going on in your important lives you better make sure you're at your residence all day if thats what it takes otherwise you'll get charged $70 a 2nd time, a 3rd time and a 4th and so on and so on L Laughlin L Laughlin

Dennis Payne 3 months ago- If they weren't so in debt with Tennessee Valley Authority then they probably would be more concerned about their customers instead being more concerned about their debt that we as customers are having to suffer from to bring them out of debt with rate hikes and unnecessary fees. Jonathan Prince Jonathan Prince