The lawsuit was filed Monday on behalf of Chambers County resident Lisa Khoury in Harris County, who claimed her electricity bill had risen to $ 9,340 in the week of the storm. According to the lawsuit, her average monthly bills typically range from $ 200 to $ 250.
She said that Griddy had automatically withdrawn $ 1,200 from her bank account from February 13-18, and her total bill from February 1-19 was $ 9,546. The lawsuit states that some customers had bills as high as $ 17,000.
The complaint accused the company of “overcharging” some 29,000 customers “knowing that consumers would suffer harm”.
Khoury said she was touched by the allegations even as she and her husband suffered “largely without power” in their home from February 17-18, as they hosted her parents and in-laws who are in their 80s during the storm.
She claimed that, despite her concerns about the withdrawals and subsequent check bouncing, she never heard from Griddy. She finally placed a stop payment in her bank account on February 18.
In Texas, residents can choose between two electricity bill options: a fixed plan, which keeps their price at the same rate regardless of market conditions, or a market rate plan, which can fluctuate based on how much electricity is used and the market price of electricity. Griddy offers the latter plan.
“We charge (customers) the wholesale price of energy in real time, which changes every 5 minutes. You basically pay the same price as a private energy supplier or utility,” Griddyy said in a statement. Griddy claims on its website that this strategy will be cheaper for most customers.
Last week’s storm hit the state’s power grid and resulted in rolling power outages. It also caused Griddy’s wholesale price to rise to $ 9,000 per megawatt hour due to a shortage of supply and increased power demand. Before the storm, the rate was $ 50 per megawatt hour, the suit says.
In the run-up to the storm, Griddy advised its customers to switch to a different flat-rate provider and told customers through its website that it was “seeking help from utility companies.” But many could not change because of the approaching weather.
The lawsuit aims to provide $ 1 billion in financial support for Khoury and “on behalf of everyone else in similar situations.”
It also accuses Griddy of violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and asks for an injunction to prevent the company from collecting payments for “outrageous prices.”
Khoury’s attorney Derek Potts, of the Houston-based Potts Law Firm, told ABC News that Griddy has 29,000 clients in Texas who could influence the lawsuit.
“What happened financially to all of Griddy’s customers, both in terms of the exorbitant prices charged and the way they were collected from people’s bank accounts and credit cards, literally in the midst of a disaster, while many without power, heat , and water, clearly violates Texas laws in place to protect consumers, “Potts said.
Griddy did not immediately respond to ABC News’s request for comment, but dismissed the lawsuit as “worthless” to Reuters.
Griddy has blamed the Public Benefit Commission for raising the wholesale market price of electricity during the crisis, saying the company was not taking advantage of the increased prices.
“We intend to fight this for and alongside our customers for fairness and accountability – to reveal why such price increases were possible because millions of Texans were without power,” Griddy said in a blog post.
Texas’s controversial power grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), is also facing lawsuits after more than 4 million customers lost power in the storm.
The top of ERCOT’s board of directors announced on Tuesday that they will step down amid outrage over the company’s handling of the storm. Four directors, including the chairman and the vice-chairman, have submitted their resignation, which will take effect on Wednesday. A candidate for a position on the board of directors also said he no longer wanted to consider his name. All five live outside of Texas, which only intensified ERCOT’s control.
Morgan Winsor of ABC News contributed to this report.
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