ByHow Can You Report a Water Utility Company for Price Gouging?
Price gouging is when a company takes unfair advantage of emergencies and disasters to make consumers pay significantly more money for essential goods and services. Cases can include anything from drug price gouging to price gouging on Amazon.
Although many people are unaware of it, your water utility company cannot do this. It is completely illegal. So,
You can identify and report your water utility for price gouging on your own, but it would require a lot of time and effort. It can often get stressful keeping in contact with the Attorney General and your water utility to stay up to date on the results and the potential for a class action.
However, with DoNotPay, you can easily collect all the information and evidence you need to report the company, send demand letters to your water utility, and receive the appropriate compensation for their egregious actions.
What Qualifies as Price Gouging?
Price gouging includes any scenario where a company tries to take advantage of vulnerable consumers who don't have any other choice but to pay the extra money for essential goods or services. Although it is illegal, this is common after big disasters and emergencies that require certain items or services to get things back to normal. In some cases, they're even necessary to survive.
Essential goods and services can include the following and more:
- Home repair and tree removal services
- Water
- Food
- Generators
- Batteries
How Do You Spot Price Gouging in Your Water Utility Company?
There is no way to spot whether your water utility is price gouging you or someone you know. However, you can look out for one or more of these signs to make a solid case:
| A significant increase in pricing on your water utility bill | While businesses can increase their prices for necessities during an emergency, it is against the law to raise the prices excessively to take advantage of the situation. |
| A vast difference in prices between two similar products | When you compare two similar products, significant increases in prices may indicate price gouging. For example, if one water utility company is priced twice as high as another, it can be considered price gouging. |
Even if you're not sure, reporting potential pricing problems can be crucial for not only identifying if the merchant is price gouging but for preventing them from taking advantage of more people.
If you notice your , you should do the following:
- Report the company to your local government. Once your report is filed to the appropriate government branch, they will investigate and prosecute the company.
- Send demand letters to the company or start a class action. Depending on your state, you may be entitled to a refund for the purchase and restitution for damages.
What Do I Need to Send demand letters to the Water Utility Company or Start a Class-Action?
Believe it or not, your water utility company cannot stop your water services just because you're fighting them for price gouging their services to you. If they try to say that they will, keep their information -- through email or text -- as additional evidence against them.
Other things you will need to send demand letters to your water utility company for price gouging include:
- Your water utility company's name and address
- As many details of your service as possible, including type, price, company, etc.
- The location, time, and date of the service that has potentially been price gouged.
- Photo evidence of your current water utility bills to compare against past bills. If you can, photo evidence of other company costs to compare may also be helpful.
How Can DoNotPay Help?
DoNotPay 's price gouging product can help you collect evidence against your water utility company by generating a fake credit card that you can use for the transaction. DoNotPay can then help you file a demand letter with this evidence, requesting compensation.
To do this, all we need you to do is:
- Open the Price Gouging Protection product on DoNotPay
- Generate a fake credit card to use with your water utility company
- Complete the transaction with the provided fake credit card
- Save a photo of the transaction as evidence and start the demand letter process
- Answer a few questions through our chatbot about the water utility company and the transaction
How DoNotPay Can Protect You Against Price Gouging
If you want to protect against price gouging but don't know where to start, DoNotPay has you covered in 5 easy steps:
- Open the Price Gouging Protection product on DoNotPay.
- Generate a fake credit card to use with the merchant.
- Complete the transaction with the fake credit card.
- Save a photo of the transaction as evidence and start the demand letter process.
- Answer a few questions through our chatbot about the merchant and transaction.
Other Problems DoNotPay Can Solve
DoNotPay can do more than prevent and resolve your price gouging problems with your utility company. We can also help you report price-gouging gas stations, eBay price gouging, and more.
Even better, let us solve other problems outside of price gouging too:
- How To Cancel
- Chargebacks And Refunds
- Help With Bills
- Small Claims Court