Fraudulent Billing and Usage

I opened my account with Xcel back in September of 2020. I am relatively young and have bounced from apartment to apartment communities due to increased rent prices; every time submitting the proper stop/transfer service requests to my new address.

Around mid 2023 (or so) I discovered through my usage statement that my address on my statement was incorrect. I called and tried to get that resolved and was informed that I may “see back charges” for the time I was billed for the wrong unit (which was NOT my fault and a failure of the Xcel Customer Service Team to do their job and process my move request). I had not heard anything about this request so assumed it had been handled.

Fast forward to April 2024 where I moved into a slightly larger unit with a roommate, my first month of living in this unit my usage nearly quadrupled at almost 1400KWh of usage a month from an average of 200-400KWh a month when living by myself, and increasing every month. For over 6 months I repeatedly called Xcel requesting a meter test or to have someone check the meter because

1. That dramatic increase is an obvious sign that something is incorrect.
2. Those are industrial levels of power for an apartment (I don’t mine bitcoin and I work a full-time job).

3.I performed usage tests in my own unit by shutting off our breakers and monitoring the usage and still seeing dramatic power usages with our breakers off.

After about the 6th month mark customer service finally let me know that my meter was wired to the incorrect unit and that they had sent someone out to correct it. I was never called, emailed, or communicated anything about this change and rubbed me the wrong way having to call Xcel to find out what they were doing to my account. For the next couple months after this, they started adjusting my statements and changing the past usage and doing all kinds of weird things with my statements that quite frankly seemed like fraud - in the end to be only refunded about $80 in credit after paying over $1300 in electricity bills in a span of about 6 months. Shortly after I filed a PUC complaint because of these apparent fraudulent changes to my statements. Jason Brontzmann was my representative for that initial PUC and he did a terrible job at easing my concerns about how much I overpaid and did not communicate effectively.
In December of 2025 I submitted a final stop service request as I no longer needed an account in my name - I received a final bill of ~$72 and assumed that was the end of it.
In March of 2026 I noticed that Xcel had withdrawn nearly $300 from my bank account nearly three months after closing my Xcel account. After checking my Xcel account I noticed the total was actually almost $500, but there was a ~$170 credit sitting in my account so the total was ~$300; so I filed another PUC complaint due to the ongoing issues I kept having with this company. Thankfully the customer service advocate that I worked with was very helpful and transparent and actually got my timely answers and informed me of her process the entire way through until the issue was resolved.

Fire Danger in the City of Denver

On December 19, 2025, an Xcel property (1570 W Jewell) caught fire In the Ruby Hill neighborhood. Many of the Xcel properties inside the city of Denver are not maintained to prevent brush fires. One would think a company that settled the Marshall Fire claims for 640 million dollars would look to prevent these fires from happening again in urban areas.

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