Power companies say no funny business with high winter bills

BLADEN COUNTY, NC (WWAY) — If you want to keep your house warm during the long, cold winter, you have to pay up. Recently we have received phone calls from viewers who say their power bill for December doubled and in some cases tripled.

Both Four-County EMC and Progress Energy say that nothing unusual is going on in their billing departments. Both companies say complaints about high power bills are very common this time of year. They say a lot of things can contribute to those bills jumping significantly from one month to the next.

Four-County EMC says the short answer to what is causing these enormous bills can be the weather and the number of days customers are being billed for.

“Two things that have affected the light bills this winter,” spokesman Chris Ingram said.”One has been the cold weather. It’s the coldest recorded December. The other thing that gets us in December is the holidays. A lot of times our billing periods which are 28 to 30 days goes to 32- to 34-day billing periods.”