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Will Duke Energy cover your electric bill?

After not having electricity for days, many Duke Energy customers got their power back only to find higher than normal bills.
That's why a message being shared between some area residents seems promising.

It says that Duke Energy will waive or lower your bill if you just follow these steps:"Duke-energy.com

Pick your state then
Billing &payment options.
Don't go to your account just go to billing and payment options.
Select Pay bill one time by cc debit or echeck. I believe it the middle option. Put account number and zip and it will show you your info and balance. Hit next. Put in your phone number associated with acct and email and hit pay now. Full amount.
Routing number. 011736020
Acct number is social associated with account. Hit agree to terms and you will get a thank you and confirmation number. 😊"

The only problem - Duke Energy is not behind this and they don't have any idea who is.

A spokeswoman for the company said there are no programs or processes available to lower or erase bills right now, certainly not in text messages. In a statement they said, "Duke Energy does not solicit personal information from customers. We have an outage alert program where customers can enroll to receive outage alerts. Customers can sign up online for phone or email alerts, or text REG to 57801 to enroll for text alerts."

Duke could not say whether this was a scam, prank or something else but said they will investigate.

10 News was made aware of the message by Amy Clark. She didn't follow the directions but one of her relatives did.

"I just can't believe people go out of their way to do stuff like this," she said. "We're all going through trauma right now, just went through a horrific storm...and then people sit there all day worrying about how to scam people."

She said she's worried her relative is compromised after entering their social security number into the system and wanted to share the message so others would avoid the same.

"Don't fall into things like this," she said. "It's easier said than done, but it's definitely something that can be done."

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