Rochester Gas and Electric: disconnection notice
Call RG&E for a payment agreement on a final notice; New York requires 15 days' notice, limits shutoff hours, and protects medical emergencies and cold-weather cases.
What does this mean?
Grade A (high: almost everything comes from official pages read directly). 100% of 20 sources are the organization's own pages or government sites; 1 value(s) were read from a search snippet or an archive copy.
Collect
- final termination notice
- account number
- medical certificate from a doctor or local board of health
- income documents
Steps
Call RG&E first and ask for a payment agreement that is reasonable and affordable.
If someone has a serious illness that a shutoff would aggravate, get a certificate from a doctor or the local board of health to RG&E.
Tell RG&E if you are blind, disabled or 62 or older and live only with people who are 62 or older, 18 or younger, or blind or disabled.
If you cannot make an arrangement, call the DPS Emergency Hotline at 800-342-3355 (7:30 a.m.-7:30 p.m. business days). Do not use the online form for a final disconnection notice.
Facts you can cite
- Deadline
HEFPA (DPS brochure, 12/25): service may not be disconnected for overdue bills unless the provider has given a final written notice and waited 15 days to allow payment or a payment agreement.
Source: dps.ny.gov, verified 2026-10-13
- Policy
HEFPA: shutoffs are permitted only 8:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m., Monday through Thursday, excluding holidays, the day before a holiday, and the two-week period around Christmas and New Year's Day.
Source: dps.ny.gov, verified 2026-10-13
- Policy
HEFPA: between November 1 and April 15 the provider must make a special effort to determine whether terminating heat-related service will seriously impair health or safety.
Source: dps.ny.gov, verified 2026-10-13
- Policy
HEFPA: service may not be shut off with a medical certification by a doctor or local board of health; after 30 days the certificate must be renewed and inability to pay shown. For life-support equipment the certificate stays in effect until DPS ends it, with inability to pay shown every three months.
Source: dps.ny.gov, verified 2026-10-13
If that fails, escalate
Go up one step at a time. Keep the reference numbers and dates from each contact.
Customer service
Supervisor
Written complaint
MailRG&E address as listed on the NYS Clean Heat contact page RG&E, 89 East Avenue, Rochester, NY 14649State 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).New York State Public Service Commission / Department of Public Service, Office of Consumer Services: Helpline 800-342-3377 (complaints), Hotline 800-342-3355 (shut-offs). DPS says to first seek the assistance of the utility; DPS asks the utility to contact you, and if it does not respond within two weeks, contact DPS again.
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).New York State Office of the Attorney General.
Watch out
- rge.com (and all Avangrid sites) timed out for every automated fetch on 2026-10-13. The outage number comes only from a search-result summary; confirm it on the bill.
- No RG&E gas emergency number, damage-claim channel or assistance program page could be sourced.
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:
Rochester Gas and Electric says it will disconnect my service on [date]. Use Escalate Anything to stop it.Source code, other install options and the Claude Code plugin