Explanation of Charges
Customer Charge
The customer charge is a base charge per month billed whether or not any electricity is used. It provides a service of having electricity available to your location when you need it. There are times when you require work done on the power lines in your yard or area, or maybe a meter isn't working properly. The customer charge covers the cost of lineman to fix these problems without additional charges to your account.
Estimated Reading Charge
Every month it is the consumers responsibility to send or call in a meter reading for each meter you have. McLean Electric always bills a month behind so if no reading is received by the 20th of each month an estimated reading will be automatically calculated by the system because we will be working on the next months billing. For each meter that a consumer has and no reading sent there is a $2.50 charge assessed.
It is important to send or call readings in each month. For example if an account goes without an actual reading for more than 60 days the system may estimate very high and overcharge compared to what you may have actually used. This may make it difficult to pay the bill when received and cause delinquencies. If the system estimates too low and then 60 days later you call or send an actual reading, again there may be a very large bill to contend with.
Sometimes it may be difficult to get to a meter to read it, such as during the winter months, if this should happen please don’t just write down a reading because it may be too high. Please call and we can either bill you the minimum customer charge and catch up next month or we can figure out an average and we would be alerted to the situation.
If more than 60 days go by without an actual reading, the meter will be read by the Cooperative and a $25.00 fee will be charged to your bill. Please read your meters, this will save you money and many problems in correcting the problem of incorrect readings later. If you ever have any questions, please call (701) 463-2291 or (800) 263-4922.
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