Damn you E9A

My Previous PG&E plan was E1B with CARE. PG&E has a rate plan for electric car owners E9A and E9B. I opted for E9A thinking that if I change the rate plan to one catered for EVs that I would save some money, since my PHEV kit only takes 3-4KW to charge. Long story short, I got my bill and it's 50% higher than my normal bill. Worst of all, no CARE discount. I called PG&E back and explained to them regarding the missing CARE discount. I was informed that E9 plans do not qualify for CARE discount. Further more, once a plan is changed, you are locked into that plan for 12 billing cycles. Holy crap! with summer coming, there's no way I can afford $.3047-$.56915 per kw peak when summer comes. Luckily there was a loophole with my transaction. When I was told that CARE discounts does not apply to E9A and once plan is changed there's a 12 billing cycle lock I quickly realize I was not told this. In all honesty, I had not read about this in my research. Many of you will blame me that I didn't search correctly but I don't care. I told the CS rep that I was not told about the 12 billing cycle lock and no CARE discount if I switch to E9A. The CS rep connected me to a supervisor. I explained to him the situation again. He said that he will listen to the recording and get back to me. I was confident that the first CS rep didn't inform me about those 2 policies. After I got off the phone with PG&E, I listened to my recordings. Luckily I installed an app on my phone that records all the conversations. Sure enough, there was no mention of those 2 policies. The supervisor called me back and informed me that he had listened to the recordings and the CS rep did not informed me of CARE discount will not work on E9A. In fact no mention of CARE discount ever came up. He had revert my plan back to my old plan and told me to discard my current billing.
After this whole fiasco, I realize that E1B/CARE works out far better than E9A because with E1B/CARE, I can plug in and pay $.08316-$.09563 regardless of time charge or what my monthly usage has been, even if I've used 5000kw for the month. I use 600-1000kw a month pending weather BTW. With E9A, I'm limited to charging the car from 12AM to 7AM (impossible to do b/c sometimes I work graveyards) if I want the cheap rates. Even then, to get the cheap $.06186 per kw, I have to stay under 445kw a month. That's impossible to do where I live.

To sum up, If you have PG&E CARE discount, don't switch to any other plans. It won't save you money and only jack up your electricity bill. You'll locked to that plan for 12 billing cycles.
BTW I'm interested in hearing from you guys what you pay per kw and how many kw/mo you use. Thanks.

 

I live by myself. My income is right below the cut off line. So I do qualify for CARE and still able to afford a Prius V because I don't have other mouths to feed. A welfare recipient driving a Mercedes is very possible if the the MB is a paid off 190E.

The PG&E billing states the baseline usage(currently 11.9kw/day) Tier 1, 101-130% over baseline Tier 2, 131-200% over baseline Tier 3, 200%-300% over baseline Tier 4 and 300%-up over baseline Tier 5. Each of those tier has it's own charge per kw. If you don't have a rate per kw over baseline on your billing then you must have a single charge per kw regardless of usage. I can stay in tier 2 if I don't my heater and freeze to death. There's no point to use the central heater and drive up my gas bill to heat up the whole house if I'm only staying in 1 room.