When Ella Allen and Diashawn Wright got an unusually high gas bill for their home in West Pullman toward the end of 2022, the parents of five young children thought it was a fluke.
But when the monthly charges skyrocketed during winter — reaching a whopping $1,030.77 for their bill due last March — they took a closer look. That’s when they noticed an entry on the last page of the bill that said “alternative energy supplier service.”
The supplier, Direct Energy, was billing their usage at 97 cents per therm — nearly twice the price Peoples Gas would have charged.
It turned out they’d been billed by the alternative gas supplier for months.
The couple say they never signed up for Direct Energy and don’t know how the switch occurred. Allen called it “a complete…
