The most useful message you can send is a correction. If a rate, a wattage, or a piece of arithmetic on this site is wrong, tell us which page and what the right figure is, and we will fix it and note the change.
What we can help with
- Corrections — a wrong number, a broken calculation, a stale rate.
- Sourcing questions — where a particular figure came from and what period it covers.
- Calculator bugs — tell us your browser and what you entered.
- Suggestions — a calculator that ought to exist and does not.
What we cannot help with
We are not a utility, a supplier, a broker, or an advisor. We cannot look up your account, dispute a bill on your behalf, switch your supplier, arrange assistance with paying a bill, or tell you which plan to sign up for. If you are having trouble paying a utility bill, your state public utility commission and your utility's own customer assistance office are the right first calls, and both are free.
How to send a useful correction
A correction we can act on the same day usually contains four things, in this order.
- The page. The full address, not the topic. Several pages carry similar figures and we would rather not guess which one you were reading.
- The figure as printed. Quote it exactly, including the units and the period we attached to it. Quoting it back tells us immediately whether you are looking at the version we think is live or a cached copy.
- What it should be. The corrected value, with units.
- Where that comes from. This is the part that decides how fast the fix happens. A utility tariff sheet or rate schedule, a table from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a manufacturer's published specification or an EnergyGuide label all let us verify the claim in minutes. A screenshot of your own bill is useful evidence about your own account but cannot on its own establish what a published average should be.
What happens next: we check the source you cite against the source we used. If you are right, we change the figure, and where the change is material the page records that it changed and why. If the two sources genuinely disagree — which happens more often with appliance data than with rates — we usually say so on the page rather than silently picking a winner. If we think the existing figure is correct, we will tell you what it is based on so you can push back. Either way you get an answer.
Reporting a calculator that gives a wrong answer
Arithmetic bugs and browser bugs look identical from the outside, so the report needs enough detail to tell them apart. Please include:
- The browser and device, including the version if you can find it, and whether you are running an extension that blocks scripts.
- Every value you entered, field by field, exactly as typed. Whether you typed 0.17 or 17 in a cents-per-kilowatt-hour field changes the answer by a factor of a hundred, and that is the single most common cause of a result that looks absurd.
- The result the page gave you and the result you expected, with your working if you have it.
Because the calculators run entirely in your browser, we cannot see what happened on your machine and there is no server log for us to inspect. Your description is the only evidence there is.
Why we cannot advise on your specific bill
We get asked to look at individual bills often, and we decline for a reason that is worth setting out plainly: without your tariff, any answer we gave would be a guess dressed up as analysis. The tariff is the legal document that governs what your utility may charge you. It sets the tier thresholds, the seasonal definitions, the minimum charge, the riders, the fuel adjustment mechanism and the rules for prorating a bill when a rate changes mid-cycle. Two customers of the same utility, on the same nominal rate, can receive materially different bills for the same consumption. Guessing at those provisions from a distance would produce a number that sounds authoritative and is not.
Two free resources genuinely can help with your specific account, and both have powers we do not. Your state public utility commission regulates the utility, holds the approved tariffs on file, and operates a consumer complaint process that obliges the utility to respond. Your utility's own customer assistance office can pull your account, tell you whether a meter read was estimated, explain a charge line by line, arrange a payment plan, and in many cases point you at hardship or weatherisation programmes you qualify for. Start with the utility, escalate to the commission if the answer does not hold up.
What we can do is help you check the arithmetic yourself. The electricity bill calculator and the guide to reading a bill between them cover most of what people are actually trying to work out when they ask us to look.
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