- Rochester business owners Vince Schiano and Chelsea Felton say they received massive, inaccurate utility bills from Rochester Gas and Electric last year.
- They’ve since tried to resolve the issues but haven’t been fully successful.
- RG&E, NYSEG and other utilities have faced outcry over their billing practices in the last year.
For Vince Schiano, there have been no easy solutions when it comes to his energy bills.
As the co-owner of Schiano’s Pizzeria at 360 Park Ave., both he and his son Mario have found it difficult to get answers. His problems with Rochester Gas & Electric Corp. began in April 2022, after the utility took $10,000 out of their business account on a Friday night, he said.
Neither Schiano nor his son could get anyone at RG&E to respond to their calls at the time.
“They just took it out. I called Friday night, 4 p.m., no answer. I called the bank to stop payment, but the money was already gone,” he said.
The utility put the money back in the restaurant’s account one week later, only to attempt to withdraw the same amount a second time, according to Schiano. After the initial incident, Schiano decided to have the bank stop all payments to the utility, opting instead to withdraw the necessary money owed each month and mail it in, he said.
“It’s so confusing,” Schiano said, adding, “they’re terrible to deal with.”
Schiano is not alone in his struggle to decipher whether he’s getting accurate utility bills. Another Rochester-area restaurant owner, Chelsea Felton, fought for months to get an explanation for a $26,000 RG&E bill that arrived last year, and felt the utility never fully addressed her complaints about their billing practices.
With the rollout of a new customer information and billing system in September 2022, NYSEG and RG&E customer complaints have spiked 60% over the previous two years combined, totaling more than 4,700, according to the state’s Department of Public Service (DPS).
Schiano and Felton reached out to the…
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