On the 28th of sept I received an electric bill for over $400. Since I have a 1100 sq ft house live alone and am gone at work all day i was shocked. My kw hrs used showed 2900. In the past year I had never used more than 1590 and my average was 1200. Of course this information was hard to come by since Direct Energy said TXU would need to provide it and TXU said my retail provider (Direct Energy) needed to provide it to me. I also asked for copies of the last three bills from Direct energy and they did not send those. They did send someone elses bills to me though. After I finally got the info I went around with both Direct Energy and TXU about who's responsibility it was...TXU just reads the meter and DE just bills it. Finally after DE did not arrange for TXU to re-read my meter I did so myself. They came and re-read it on the 30th and notified DE on the 3rd of October that the reading was indeed incorrect and gave them the correct reading. All of this time I was calling DE and getting no where and ended up calling the Public Utility Commission who gave me yet another 'customer service' number. The Customer Service people I spoke to as a general rule did NOTHING to help me. They sometimes even refused to let me speak to anyone else when I insisted that if they could not give me what I wanted I wanted to speak to someone who could. One even told me no one could give me what I wanted. They refused to let me speak to the billing department saying they had no phones. I couldn't speak to anyone higher than them because they couldn't transfer me. They could only take messages. When I insisted one of them said 'are you asking me or telling me?' I told him to interpret it however he wished but to give me to someone else to speak to. He refused. Much of these exchanges occured on October 13th a full 10 days after everyone knew my bill was incorrect but me. Fearing that I would owe further money in late charges if I didn't pay the obviously incorrect bill I had gone ahead and paid it the day before. AND FOR 10 DAYS PREVIOUSLY THEY ALL KNEW I DID NOT OWE THAT MONEY AND DID NOT NOTIFY ME IN SPITE OF THE NUMEROUS PHONE CALLS AND COMPLAAINTS TO DIRECT ENERGY, TXU, AND THE WRITTEN COMPLAINT TO THE PUBLIC UTILTIY COMMISSION! Now I am told by Direct Energy that they do not have the new reading (hmmm....) and even when they do have it, it must be 'processed' and it will take three to six weeks to get my money back to me. DO I GET TO WAIT 3 TO 6 WEEKS TO PAY MY BILL? NO, IF I DO THAT I WILL OWE LATE FEES. CAN I CHARGE THEM LATE FEES? NO, I HAVE NO RIGHTS! DO NOT USE DIRECT ENERGY. THEY SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO USE THE PHRASE 'CUSTOMER SERVICE'. It is a LIE.