Duke Energy sent me a glossy brochure in the mail this week. It had a picture of a smiling lady on it and it read:

Don't forget to sign up for your FixedBill

Your Duke Energy bill could be the same every month. 

Open to find out how much.

But, wait a minute, I thought. My Duke Energy bill is already the same every month.

I'm on the Budget Billing Program which makes my bill the same every month and the price I pay is based on my historical usage. And after every 12 months, Duke Energy will "square up" with me and I will pay the difference if they charge me too little, and they will pay the difference if I pay too much. That's how I think it works anyway.

Whatever the case, I'm already paying the same every month. 

This new program comes with a program fee that is "not to exceed 9 percent above your expected usage adjusted for normal weather". 

It was really weird to me that they were touting that my electric bill could be the same every month, but the amount I was already paying was the same every month through the Budget Billing Program.

They gave me a deadline to sign up for FixedBill, and the deadline was just around the time that I would "square up" with Duke Energy for the Budget Billing program. 

The price that Duke gave me was around $20 less per month than I was paying with the Budget Billing Program. 

It seemed tempting, that's for sure.

But I was skeptical of the FixedBill program and I thought that I could be paying more if I went with this FixedBill program than if I stayed with the Budget Billing Program.

I did a StartPage search for "duke fixed bill vs budget bill" , and among the search results, the sentiment towards the FixedBill program was pretty bad.

Among the pages that this search returned were:

From those and other sites, I'm getting the impression that I should stick with the Budget Billing program and I should avoid the FixedBill program.

Also, I can't find the FixedBill program on the Duke Energy web site. I wonder why they don't list it there. Or maybe I'm blind, but I didn't see it anywhere I looked. Even under the menu for "My Bill Preferences" where I found the Budget Billing Plan.

Related:

Duke Energy - Budget Billing (official page)