Electric companies in Texas (Houston, San Antonio: credit score, house, buy)

[NOTAM]

Hey yall....i know there are those websites e.g. powertochoose, where you can compare electric companies but i would like more "personal feedback" from my feller Texans.
I am moving second week of October to Coryell County, and have to start setting up my electric. I heard TXU is the most expensive and Direct Energy (or something of that sort) the least-but heard from one person "dont use them" (but they didnt expand on why).....i have reviewed the powertochoose page and some of them are so cheap. is there a reason? are some of them not as reliable as TXU in case of outages or something?
So.........what companies do yall use and why?

[blueskies49]

Hate to admit this but I use TXU simply because I didn't want to go to the trouble of researching the other companies. But I was also afraid of problems with the other ones such as you mentioned as far as how reliable they might be. I hadn't asked anyone I knew if they use someone else or what their experiences were. I think I might try asking some of my coworkers.

[NOTAM]

let me know what you find out! thanks!

Originally Posted by blueskies49

Hate to admit this but I use TXU simply because I didn't want to go to the trouble of researching the other companies. But I was also afraid of problems with the other ones such as you mentioned as far as how reliable they might be. I hadn't asked anyone I knew if they use someone else or what their experiences were. I think I might try asking some of my coworkers.

[tstone]

Electricity reliability has absolutely NOTHING to do with which company you're paying every month. The company you're paying is a middleman, in that they buy the electricity off the power grid, then resell it to you. Electricity reliability has to do with the company that owns the poles and wires. (In Houston, that's Centerpoint.) Therefore if you have an outage, you call the company that owns the poles and wires, not the company you pay. That said, I use Spark energy as they are the cheapest, automatic, and all online. Haven't had a problem yet.

[nativeDallasite]

TXU sucks; even though my credit score is over 700 they charged me a $330 deposit to hook up my power. I hate them.

[Spree]

<<TXU sucks; even though my credit score is over 700 they charged me a $330 deposit to hook up my power.<<

Wow! We have Reliant - no deposit and Atmos for our gas. Atmos was going to charge us $180 deposit but all I had to do was get our previous utility company to fax them saying we paid our bills on time.

[tstone]

Spark was zero deposit with a 700+ credit score.

[NOTAM]

well forget TXU then, my credit aint that great....so will probably use Reliant. but i have used FIRSTCHOICEPOWER OF NEW MEXICO when i lived in North Texas and have a good record with them, so i will also try them!

[RSTX]

I've been using TXU for the last 10 years. No complaints. Our last three electric bills on our 2250 sq/ft house have been $230-240.

[Steel Man]

I feel sorry for you folks that have to pay more for electricity. I recently read in the paper that investors are pouring into Texas as rates are expected to go up about 30% in the future. I'm glad that our electric company (CPS) in San Antonio has the cheapest rates of all large cities in Texas. Also, more than half of what they make goes to the city. The most I've paid this summer is $140 (2100 sf two story).

Anyway, here is a website to help you choose the best rate.
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