CenterPoint Energy: billing error
Gas and Indiana customers dispute with CenterPoint; Houston electric customers dispute the bill with their retail provider, which can ask CenterPoint to test the meter.
What does this mean?
Grade A (high: almost everything comes from official pages read directly). 95% of 22 sources are the organization's own pages or government sites.
Collect
- the bill
- meter readings
- earlier bills
Steps
For a gas bill or an Indiana electric bill, call the customer service number for your state and ask for a review or a meter test.
Use your own state's number.
For a Houston electric bill, dispute it with your retail electric provider. It can request a meter test from CenterPoint.
Put the dispute in writing through the online contact form.
More contacts for this issue
Rules in force
- Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act (ROSCA) negative option requirements15 U.S.C. 8401-8405
A seller that charges consumers online through a negative option feature (for example an automatic renewal or a free trial that converts to paid) must clearly disclose all material terms before taking billing information, get the consumer's express informed consent before charging, and provide simple mechanisms to stop recurring charges. The FTC enforces ROSCA.
Source: law.cornell.edu, verified 2026-10-12
1 citable point
- Policy
The seller must obtain "a consumer's express informed consent before charging the consumer's credit card, debit card, bank account, or other financial account".
Source: law.cornell.edu, verified 2026-10-12
- Policy
If that fails, escalate
Go up one step at a time. Keep the reference numbers and dates from each contact.
Customer service
Gas, Indiana electric: the state customer service number. Houston electric billing: the retail electric provider.
Supervisor
Written complaint
State agency
Your state’s utility commission. Find it in the list of state agencies (also as JSON:
states/<code>.json, for example states/ny.json).Public Utility Commission of Texas for Houston electric; the state commission for gas and Indiana electric (see notes).
State agency
Your state’s attorney general. Find it in the list of state agencies (also as JSON:
states/<code>.json, for example states/ny.json).
Watch out
- Payment extensions and arrangements are set up in My Account (sign-in).
- CenterPoint's contact page shows phone numbers whose dial links do not match the displayed numbers (Houston electric, Ohio gas).
Let your AI agent handle this
Escalate Anything is a free, open-source MCP server for Claude, Cursor, VS Code, Gemini CLI, Codex and other AI apps. Your agent gets this playbook, keeps a case log with reference numbers and follow-up dates, and drafts each message for you to approve.
1. Set it up (needs uv):
uvx escalate-anything setup2. Ask your agent:
CenterPoint Energy charged me [amount] on [date] for something I did not order. Use Escalate Anything to get it corrected.Source code, other install options and the Claude Code plugin