Complaints

The complaint text that is displayed might not represent all complaints filed with BBB. Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business.

• Initial Complaint

  Date:10/05/2022

  Type:Order Issues
  Status:

  ResolvedMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  Ampion has billed me for $360 for 3 previous months of erroneous billing due to RG&E billing errors. They warned my about this impending charge update by EMail and said to contact them to arrange an alternate payment schdule. When I call their contact &/or Help lines they will not answer any calls to any of their department lines. I have sent EMails requesting assistance but get no respose. I would like to cancel this contract but cannot contact them, they will not answer phone calls and have not responded to EMails

  

  Business Response

  Date: 10/12/2022

  Hello ***********************,
  Thank you for your communication. We are happy to hear you received our proactive notification regarding your triple billing statement. In reviewing your account activity I do see this may have been timing related. I confirmed you called in on 10/4 at 9a and left a voicemail and followed up just after noon with an email. I can confirm both communications were received and in our queue to be reviewed as the day to day tasks were addressed. An auto reply would have been received in your email and included part of this communication Your request has been received. Due to high ticket volume, please allow up to 3 business days for a response. On Wednesday, 10/5 in the 9a hour I see an additional inquiry related to a question for preauthorization. I have confirmed an Ampion representative was in contact with you through a phone call in the afternoon of 10/5 just after 12p to assist you with your account inquiries. Currently your account autopay is paused for three months so you may make manual payments and we will contact you when autopay has been reactivated.
  Thank you,
  Ampion Customer Care
  
  

  Customer Answer

  Date: 10/12/2022

  [A default letter is provided here which indicates your acceptance of the business's response.  If you wish, you may update it before sending it.]
  
  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response submitted by the business and have determined that the response does satisfy my issues and/or concerns in reference to complaint #********. I understand that by choosing to accept the business response that my complaint will be closed as resolved. 
  
  Regards,
  
  ***********************

• Initial Complaint

  Date:10/04/2022

  Type:Billing Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I am writing to report a situation with my solar invoice from Halo/Ampion. I have an ********** electric account and enrolled in Community Shared Solar with Halo back in July of 2020. My payments to Halo have been increasing so that they are more than two times what my ********** statement is saying that I am actually using for electricity. See the chart I attached. The current bill from ********** is $197.88 and my invoice from Halo is $514.86 for the same time period. As of right now, I have an $1,860.65 credit with **********. I have requested to terminate my contract with Halo but they said I must stay on it for 6 months longer than my request date. Since I requested a termination of my account, they have increased my invoices to more than double my actual ********** invoice. Why am I being charged so much more than I am actually using?I thought Solar would be more cost effective?In April, we used 789 and Halo charged me $294 and for the October 1 invoice, we used 777 but was charged $514.86! Why? I have talked with representatives from both ********** and Halo but no one can tell me why this dramatic price difference is happening. My emails to Halo say that they have started the process of termination and the Westhampton Solar Farm has not received an updated allocation in quite some time and that my termination will go faster than the six months. Then I get another email saying that they were wrong and that I will need to pay out the six months. Even if that is true, WHY is the cost more than double my usage??????? Please look into this situation as I believe this is not what I signed up for and is completely unacceptable. *********************** *****************************************************

  

  Business Response

  Date: 10/05/2022

  Hi ****************,
  

  We apologize in regard to your confusion over the Community Solar program you were subscribed to. Reviewing your account activity you had reached out on 8/1/22 requesting cancellation and that was requested immediately internally. The terms of contract were sent along for your review and it was mentioned removal takes up to 6 months to complete for the utility to facilitate their processes. Therefore, you should expect charges for credits applied to your utility account until removal is finalized. The representative working with you had utilized a system that was recently phased out and misinterpreted the data related to the allocation timeline related to your site. 
  

  In mid August, on 8/19 I confirmed a record of you contacting us regarding a payment that had been collected for credits produced between 5/23/22 through 6/22/22. During that exchange it was confirmed you had been scheduled to be canceled but would be within a 6 month window and further explained that this gives us time to deallocate you from the solar farm and notify your utility company you would like to cancel your subscription, which under Eversource policy we can only do four times a year. They must do work on their end to fully deallocate you before you stop receiving credits. At that time you were in contact with the same representative from 8/1 and they had apologized for the confusion surrounding the allocation dates changing that they had shared originally. It was suggested that you may make manual payments online each month for less than your total amount due so you can pay an amount closer to what you typically would have paid with just Eversource.
  

  Your 9/1 statement was for period 6/22-7/22 and the most recent statement received on 10/1 was for 7/22-8/23. Higher solar production periods in the spring/summer may lead to generation of excess credits, and will increase your payment to Ampion. Any excess credits will be applied during fall/winter months when production is lowest, so it ***** out over the calendar year. 
  

  As of 10/4 I see you spoke with another ************* representative and they have assisted with submitting an internal request to lower your allocation percentage to the bare minimum while being removed from the site and stopped the auto payments to your account so you may make manual payments online at your convenience at https://halo.portal.ampion.net.
  

  Please do reach out to us if you have any other questions regarding your subscription service to Ampion, PBC.
  

  Thank you,
  Ampion *************
  

  
  

• Initial Complaint

  Date:09/06/2022

  Type:Billing Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I subscribed to Ampion, not being informed that billing during the summer would be substantially higher than my usage due to the solar farms collecting energy during the summer. My first bill with Ampion was more than double my highest ever electric bill with CMP. I called today to cancel after they had not responded to cancellation via email and they told me that bills during the summer are higher for this reason and it would take the winter months to offset the high summer bill overages. This isn't right. Now they have access to my banking account for 6 months while they cancel (that was clear in the contract). The salespeople at Ampion should have been very clear about having higher than normal bills in the summer months. I am not sticking around to see if what they say about lower bills in winter is true. Who could afford a more than double electric bill? This isn't right that they are doing this. I want them to expedite closure of my relationship with them and not charge these overages due to the solar farm producing extra energy during summer months.

  

  Business Response

  Date: 09/08/2022

  Hi ******************,

  
  We apologize in regard to your confusion over the Community Solar program you were subscribed to. You are part of our Central *********** program which has just launched and as a newer program it will evolve and we appreciate you being an early adopter in achieving this goal for ***** through the program. While our desire is that eventually all this information is in one statement instead of needing to be in two from your utility and Ampion, but that is development we are actively working to integrate into our systems. The community solar program involves you receiving a credit on your utility statement, which lowers your overall bill. The utility then notifies us how much of a credit they placed on your statement, once we receive that information, we then invoice you for those credits at a 15% discount if those credits are paid for with ACH/automatic debit.

  
  I see that you signed up for the program in May 2022 and as of 5/16 received confirmation that you had been validated. Included in the communication on 5/16 we provided some important reminders, including; Higher solar production periods in the spring/summer may lead to a generation of excess credits, and will increase your payment to Ampion. Any excess of credits will be applied during fall/winter months when production is lowest. You received your first statement on 9/1 for service period 6/10-7/31 for bill credits worth $249.57, and invoiced at $212.13. On 9/3 you contacted our ************************ asking for a cancellation and as of first business day, 9/6 you were immediately queued up to be canceled at CMP (cancellations are only accepted once a month by utility standards), in which that file will be sent out later this month. If you would like to remain a subscriber we would enjoy working with you. On June 24th our team provided a sample invoice with details on how to view credits to your account once they arrive. If you are interested you may send us a copy of your CMP bill and we are happy to coordinate a call to go over this together if that would be helpful.
  

  As of now your account is scheduled to be autodrafted the amount of $219.62 on Sunday, 9/11. If you prefer to continue canceling your subscription we will continue with the process. Due to the utility process and timeline we wanted to communicate it is expected you will receive two to three more periods of billing until you are fully unsubscribed. If you would like to have a call each month to review the data we can gladly accommodate as well.
  Please do reach out to us if you have any other questions regarding your subscription service to Ampion, PBC.
  

  Thanks,
  Ampion Customer Care