ALEXANDRIA, La. (KALB) - For years Alexandria residents have voiced frustrations with the City’s utility department.
From high bills to questionable service interruptions, now two women are sharing their experience that questions the city’s transparency.
The complaints aren’t new but for customers like Donna Allcutt and Shareka Diggs, the frustration is reaching a boiling point.
“I went to go pay the bill on the 21st,” said Alcutt, recalling an experience from in March 2025. Alcutt said she had $200 to pay her bill, however, this left her six cents short. “I told the girl; I got the six cents in my truck and she said don’t worry about it, they are not going to turn you off for it.”
Allcutt said she trusted the information she got from a utility worker who told her that her services would not be disconnected for a six-cent balance. But when Alcutt returned home, she said the power was out. She immediately called the office.
“I said my lights are off and I paid my bill,” said Allcutt. “The lady that answered the phone say you left a balance of six cent.”
She rushed to the utility office, receipt in-hand, only to be told more bad news, this time by a supervisor.
“I said they turned me off for six cents, here goes the six cents,” said Allcutt. “He said ‘no, you have to pay the 249 dollars’. I told him it’s not due for two weeks, here it is in writing, and he said ‘we can’t turn it on until you pay the 249′, by that time I was furious.”
Shareka Diggs said her trouble started with a visit from a utility truck, one day after she paid her bill.
“He was like ‘yeah you just paid 182 dollars, but now your bill is 648 dollars’,” said Diggs.
Diggs explained that despite the visit from the utility truck and a supervisor a day later, her services were never disconnected. According to Diggs, the city instead slapped her with tampering charges, saying she reconnected her services after they disconnected them.
“So, if the supervisor came behind his employee and saw that we were stealing lights Friday, why wasn’t my meter turned Friday,” asked Diggs. “My meter was turned off Monday.”
Both women say they feel deceived, and that they are not alone.
“It’s sad,” said Diggs. “We go up there and we look like the enemies, we are the ones that are not working hard, we ghetto and we gangster. It isn’t that we’re tired, we are tired.”
“I had it written down,” said Allcutt. “I pointed the lady out to them. They need to be accountable and quit lying. They start lying at the beginning of the window all the way down to the supervisor, and he lies too.”
Allcutt and Diggs are calling for fairness and a system that treats customers with dignity, not doubt.
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