Notice to Lincoln residents:
Electric bills from Integrys are legitimate

[November 04, 2014]  LINCOLN - At the Monday evening voting session of the Lincoln City Council, Mayor Keith Snyder said he was hearing from Lincoln residents that some are receiving bills for electricity from Integrys. Snyder said these bills are legitimate, and there is an explanation for what is happening.

Integrys was the city contracted electric provider for Lincoln residents and businesses up until September of this year. At that time, the city learned that Ameren Illinois was going to be offering the best price for electricity for at least the next year. The city ended their contract with Integrys and reverted back to Ameren.

Up until that time, Ameren was obligated to place the Integrys electric charges on their monthly statement. However, once the contract ended, Ameren was no longer obligated and stopped providing that service to Integrys.

The problem was that due to billing cycle dates, Integrys had not delivered all their billings to Ameren before the service stopped. Therefore, Integrys, in order to collect the last month of charges from some residents and local businesses had to do that billing themselves.

Snyder said he didn’t know for certain how many people this will affect, but he’s pretty sure it will not affect everyone. Therefore, anyone who gets a bill from Integrys and is uncertain they owe it, should call that company and confirm what the bill is and that it is owed.

He added that some may have the impression that this is a charge for discontinuing the relationship with Integrys. He said that is definitely not the case.

Additional Information from Mayor Keith Snyder
Added at 2 p.m. Tuesday afternoon.

Integrys notified us this morning that 16 Lincoln residents received bills from them due to the timing issues with Ameren bills.  Here's was their explantion:

“The bill these sixteen residents received from Integrys Energy Services is not a switching fee.  It is the final energy charges for the last month of service covering the period for 8/21/2014 – 9/22/2014.  In order to switch customers back to Ameren, the utility requires ten calendar plus two business days of lead time ahead of the meter read to process the request on time.  When we [Integrys] submit our request to return customers to the utility we immediately lose the ability to have our charges included on Ameren’s bill.  If Ameren is not ready to process a bill at that time, it creates the need for us to bill our charges directly on an Integrys Energy Services invoice. ”

Mr. Bullivant can be contacted directly if any resident who received a bill wants further information.  He can be reached at 312-681-1833 or [e-mail]. 

[Nila Smith]