Bounce Milwaukee owners Ryan Clancy and Becky Cooper-Clancy holding an axe from their latest expansion project, axe-throwing lanes.
Bounce Milwaukee is an entertainment facility that has laser tag, rock climbing, an inflatable sports arena, an obstacle course, arcade, axe-throwing bar, along with food and drink for children and adults alike.
Clancy closed the doors to his business exactly when he was supposed to. It’s not cheap to power the 15,000-square-foot facility he operates, around $4,000 per month Clancy says, so he was surprised when he received a large bill while closed. When he reached out to We Energies about it, he didn’t get a response right away. Later, he received a late penalty from the power company.
The policy We Energies has when power meters at companies show a significant reduction in how much energy they’ve used, is to assume the meter is malfunctioning and bill the average amount the company has been using. Clancy wonders why, if they’re assuming there is a malfunction, We Energies doesn’t go out and inspect the meter or let the customer know they suspect something is going on.
“The reason it exists is so customers don’t get a bill for three months of service somewhere down the line,” says Clancy, who was paraphrasing a response he finally got from a representative from We Energies. “Rather than billing customers for what they think was used, why not just call them?” Sounds simple, right?
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As soon as he was forced to lay-off his entire staff, Clancy used the last of his business’ money to give cash advances to his employees to help pay the bills before their unemployment kicked in. In trying to get on top of any bills coming up, he tried to cancel all of the usual services Bounce Milwaukee wouldn’t be using while shut down. He had a surprisingly productive and easy phone call with his satellite provider and was able to hold off on those services until he knew he would be back in business.
On the roof of Bounce Milwaukee is a pretty impressive solar-power system with 120 panels. That system made Bounce the nation’s first solar-powered pizza company. Not only are the ovens that make the pizza powered by electricity, the vehicles used to deliver them are all electric as well. The excess energy from the system gets put back into the We Energies power grid, which Clancy gets some compensation for, but the energy company has not responded to some requests as to how much power his solar system is adding.
While Clancy is waiting to hear back on official word as to how We Energies is going to handle his situation, we reached out to the power company in search of some answers. A prompt response was given by one of their representatives that said: “During the COVID-19 pandemic we have worked with the PSC (Public Services Commission of Wisconsin) to stop disconnections to all customers and waive new late fees. We encourage any customer with questions about their bill to contact us right away so we can look into it and work with them. If a customer’s usage has dropped due to a change in business practice, the customer’s bill will be updated to reflect the actual use.”
It's understandable that We Energies has a hard time staying connected with all of their customers. They supply power to over 4 million people and businesses in the area. There probably are many business owners out there that have auto-payment setup for their business’ regular bills. Sometimes when bills come in and are paid automatically, not much if any attention is paid. If anything, this can serve as a warning to business owners.
Clancy has plans to open for delivery and carryout in the next few weeks to help some of his employees get back to work. We’ll be checking back with him to see how this situation turns out. In the meantime, if you know of any other businesses going through a similar issue, let us know so we can help get their stories out.
Update: May 1, 2020:
According to Ryan Clancy, he was contacted by a representative from We Energies regarding a change to their policy. Starting May 4, they will no longer bill small businesses when there is a change in their energy consumption. Instead, they will reach out to the business in question and see if any changes in activity are to blame. That's a win in our book and we'd like to thank our readers for getting behind this story and gaining Ryan Clancy and Bounce Milwaukee some traction.
