CHICAGO (AP) - Responding to consumer complaints about soaring electric rates, Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced she is investigating the way Ameren Corp. promoted its so-called all-electric discount program.
In a release issued Monday, Madigan alleged that Ameren promoted and encouraged customers to sign up for the discounted rate program long after the company knew the discount would be eliminated.
Ameren spokesman Leigh Morris denied the charge.
"Those rates have not been promoted in at least a decade, and I'm confident much longer than that," Morris said Monday.
Under the program, St. Louis-based Ameren offered a discounted rate to customers who used electricity as their primary source of energy for heating rather than natural gas or propane. The program often has been referred to as "all-electric."
The discount disappeared in January when the state's 10-year freeze on electric rates expired.
Consumers who said they were prepared for the rate freeze expiration have complained they were blindsided by the double whammy of losing their discount, too. Illinois Commerce Commission staff have estimated the average rates for an Ameren customer who uses electric heat went up between 88 percent and 170 percent in January.
On Friday, the ICC voted 4-0 at a special meeting to look more closely at rate increases for both Ameren and ComEd customers. ComEd is a unit of Excelon Corp.
Morris said all customers were alerted to the rate increases and the discontinuation of discounts, but he acknowledged that nothing was targeted to electric heat consumers.
"We did not have a communication that was written specifically for those customers or sent specifically to those customers," he said. "That is something that should have been done and was not."
Madigan said her office is investigating Ameren's advertising and marketing under the state's Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act.
"If Ameren was promoting this discount plan to residential and business consumers or to builders after it knew the discount would disappear shortly, then we need to know about it," she said in the release.
