Find Your State Public Utilities Comission

Comments

1. hapless says:
   October 1, 2007 at 5:58 pm

   I’m not sure I would bother writing to my utility regulatory commission due to its infamous corruption. Public utility regulation is the textbook case of regulatory capture, is it not?
2. Chicago7 says:
   October 1, 2007 at 7:26 pm

   Same here, Hapless. Since most of the regulators are hoping for cushy jobs at the utilities after their term is up, what’s the point?

   Contact your state consumer utility watchdog instead – in Illinois, it’s the Citizen’s Utility Board.

   The Illinois Commerce Commission is pretty much useless, political hacks.
3. rhombopteryx says:
   October 1, 2007 at 9:15 pm

   Geeze it sucks to end up just piling on against what should be a consumer’s best friend in state government, buuuutttt in addition to the whole conflicted/in-bed-with-industry problems, some of those Utilities Commissions are actually powerless by law. Take Ben’s list – you can mostly cross off “cellular” and “cable/DSL.” Ditto “moving companies” in most states. Thank your friends in Congress for that, along with some help from the occasional sympatheic federal judge. See, a lot of federal legislation outright “preempts” state laws that would otherwise allow local Commissions to help you out. Other times, industries can convince a judge that that’s what a law should have said. As a result, the companies just don’t care about you cc’ing the PUC, because the PUC “can’t do anything anyway.”
4. FLConsumer says:
   October 2, 2007 at 5:42 am

   The PUC in FLorida is pretty much run by the utilities. They won’t even take consumer complaints! They’ll tell you to call the city franchising office instead.
5. EndlessMike says:
   April 29, 2008 at 2:27 pm

   I thought the BBB’s uselessness was common knowledge. They’re a private company that member pay into to say they’re a part of. Negative mentions on the BBB are bad, but good ones aren’t necessarily good.
6. scientician says:
   April 30, 2008 at 3:25 am

   While state PUC/PSC’s have oversight over cable companies, they generally do not handle consumer complaints. If you want to make a complaint you should contact your local state government consumer protection office. In WI, this is the Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection (DATCP). This agency generally takes action by forwarding the case to the state attorney general’s office once it reaches a threshold number of complaints or more quickly if the case is egregious.