r/Cleveland • u/myburnerforhere • 18h ago

Question Utility deposit?

Has anyone ever had to give a deposit to start a utility?

I needed to do one for First Energy and I'm wondering at what point, if any, will it be refunded?

I definitely get the necessity of it, but at some point when you've made all your payments on time for months or years and have auto pay set up, I should think it could eventually be refunded?

It's not a huge amount that I need, but it was hundreds of dollars. If I live in my home another 40 years do they need to keep it the whole time and eventually the refund becomes part of my estate?

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17

u/robodog97 North Royalton 18h ago

Interest and Release Customers who pay a deposit will receive interest, which will be applied monthly toward the total amount due.  Your deposit will be credited to your account once service is discontinued, or for residential customers when your bill has been paid for twelve consecutive months with no more than two late payments and without service interruption due to nonpayment.  Upon review of the account, if the account has met the stated conditions, the security deposit will be released (credited) to your account the following month.

https://www.firstenergycorp.com/help/billingpayments/security-deposit.html

5

u/myburnerforhere 18h ago

Thank you!

12

u/blinner Medina 18h ago

They made me do it once over 10 years ago.  I explained to them that I had never missed a payment in my life.  They did not care.  I paid the deposit and they returned it not terribly long after.  They did include the interest as promised.

3

u/INeedANAP84 17h ago

I believe I was refunded after the 1st year with them.

7

u/LoCPhoto East Side! 18h ago

You should ask First Energy

1

u/21racecar12 17h ago

Enbridge Gas does this as well. Sometimes their credit checking processes fail so they can’t immediately verify if you’ll be an on-time payer. But it all gets credited back to the later bills if you’ve made on time payments.

2

u/Ok_Stranger3988 Lakewood 17h ago

I had to do that five years ago when I moved here. They gave me the choice of the deposit or getting a letter from my previous electric provider which I thought would take a million years so I did the deposit. After a year of on time payments I got it back with interest.

1

u/diamondmind216 18h ago

Do you not have any credit history? I had to do that at 18 for my first phone bill account

5

u/myburnerforhere 18h ago

I think i just had not great credit.

1

u/GhostOfTheArcade 17h ago

I have pretty good credit (High 700's) and they made me do it.

1

u/No-Gas5342 Lakewood 16h ago

Me too! I didn’t have any utility service for a few years so idk if that’s why but if so that would be kind of ridiculous.

-4

u/RustyDawg37 18h ago

Part of the program is the fine print that tells you how this all works. If you do not want to read it and still want to know the answers contained in it, thats probably one of the best use cases for ChatGPT.

All utilities do it just not to every customer.