The $50 check that isn't
The envelope looks like money. Inside is a $50 check made out to "Current Resident," printed on check stock with a signature line and a dollar box. Look closer and the paper says "SPECIMEN-NON-NEGOTIABLE." You cannot cash it. It exists to get you to a phone number.
The mailer sells a plan called TXU Energy Free Pass 12. Four promises run across the front: your 7 highest-usage days free every month plus 2 extra free days in the Texas summer, a "$50 bonus just for signing up," cancellation fees from your old provider "covered" up to $360, and a "True Fit Guarantee" that says you can change your plan anytime for free. The offer expires 07/31/2026, and there is one way to enroll: call 1-833-751-1848.
Each of those four promises carries its own footnote on the back. We read all of them. Below, every front-page claim sits next to its own fine print.
Claims vs. fine print
Four claims on the front. Four footnotes on the back. Here they are, side by side.
The mailer says
"Get your 7 highest-usage days free every month, automatically. Plus, get 2 extra free days during the Texas summer months."
The fine print says
Free days waive the energy charge and the per-kWh delivery charge only. Base charges and the utility’s fixed monthly charge are billed in full. You need a provisioned, communicating smart meter, and TXU selects the free days after the billing period ends, so you cannot plan around them. The 2 extra summer days appear only on this mailer; we found no public EFL, terms of service, or press source confirming them.
Source: Mailer, footnote 1 (back); TXU launch press release (April 2019)
The mailer says
"$50 bonus just for signing up"
The fine print says
Not a check, and not just for signing up. It is a Visa prepaid card. A redemption postcard arrives by mail; you have 90 days to redeem it. The card is issued within five weeks after TXU has received payment in full of your first month’s bill, and only if your account is in good standing and not pending cancellation.
Source: Mailer, footnote 2 (back)
The mailer says
"Cancellation fees covered... up to $360, so you can switch with confidence"
The fine print says
It is a credit on your TXU bill, not a payment, and it is "Subject to approval." You pay your old provider’s fee yourself, send TXU the final bill, and wait to see whether the credit is approved.
Source: Mailer, footnote 3 (back)
The mailer says
"True Fit Guarantee: If your needs ever change, you can change your plan anytime - for free."
The fine print says
Free switching means switching to another TXU plan only. Leave TXU and cancellation fees apply. The new plan must run 12 months or longer and be at least as long as your current one. And the footnote ends with three words that undo the front-page pitch: "Multifamily customers only."
Source: Mailer, footnote 4 (back)
The rate TXU won't show you
Every electricity plan sold in Texas comes with an Electricity Facts Label, the standardized disclosure that states the price. For Free Pass 12, we could not find one. As of August 2026: txu.com’s Free Pass page returns a 404. The plan is missing from TXU’s own Oncor price-history table, which lists 11 current plans. None of the major rate-comparison sites we checked quotes it. The only way to learn the rate is to call the sales number on the mailer.
The last public numbers come from the original Free Pass, not the current offer. The plan’s own July 2020 Electricity Facts Label (Oncor territory) put the non-free-day rate at 19.3 cents per kWh while marketing a 13.9 cent average at 1,000 kWh. Getting from 19.3 to 13.9 required assuming 33.1% of your monthly usage lands on the 7 free days. Those are 2020 figures and may not reflect today’s plan. But they show how the advertised average gets built.
We are not saying the current rate is high. We cannot say anything about it, because we cannot see it. That is the finding: a plan marketed with a fake $50 check, sold only by phone, with no price you can read before you call.
Update, August 2026: txu.com no longer lists Free Pass at all. Its place in TXU's lineup is taken by a plan called Live Your Free, marketed as "free energy whenever you use the most, automatically." Same retroactive free-window mechanic, new name. The mailer offer this review covers ran through July 31, 2026.
Free Pass 12 is sold by phone only; the number on the mailer is 1-833-751-1848. There is no online enrollment page, and txu.com’s Free Pass URL returns a 404. As of August 2026 we could not obtain the plan’s Electricity Facts Label without calling the sales line.
How the free days work
TXU launched Free Pass in April 2019 with the pitch that customers get their "seven highest-use days of electricity free every month, automatically." The mechanism, per the mailer’s fine print and TXU’s own descriptions: after your billing period closes, TXU looks back at your smart-meter data and marks the 7 calendar days when you used the most electricity. Those days’ energy charge and per-kWh delivery charge come off the bill. You see which days were free after the fact, on your bill.
You never pick the days and never know them in advance. "Free" applies only to per-kWh charges: any base charge and the fixed monthly charge from your TDU (the utility that owns the wires, like Oncor) are billed in full every month. A provisioned, communicating smart meter is required; without one, there are no free days.
Retroactive free days sound generous and are cheap to give. Whether you come out ahead depends entirely on the rate you pay the other 23 days of the month. That is the number this offer does not show.
Do the math on 7 free days
Start with the ceiling. Seven days out of a 30-day month is 23% of the calendar. If your usage were perfectly even, the free days would cover about 23.3% of your kWh. Your 7 highest days do better than that, but not dramatically better for most homes, because usage clusters around weather and hot weeks are hot all week.
The independent test came from a 2019 analysis built on a full year of daily smart-meter reads for 10 real customers. To break even against the cheapest conventional plan, a customer needed 48% to 54% of their monthly usage packed into the 7 free days, roughly double what an even month gives you. Nine of the 10 customers would have paid 25% to 28% more on Free Pass. Across 120 customer-months, Free Pass won 2. TXU’s own 2020-era EFL assumed 33.1% of usage on the free days when computing its advertised average.
Those studies tested the 2019-2021 version of the plan, and their exact numbers are historical. Nobody has been able to test the 2026 version because the rate is not public. But the mechanism has not changed: free days are funded by the price of the non-free days, and since TXU picks the days after the month ends, you cannot shift your usage to chase them.
23.3%
Share of monthly kWh the 7 free days cover if usage were perfectly even
48-54%
Usage share needed on free days to break even (2019 smart-meter study)
9 of 10
Customers who would have paid 25-28% more on Free Pass (2019 study)
2 of 120
Customer-months where Free Pass beat the cheapest conventional plan (2019 study)
Fine print, decoded
The five footnotes on the back of the mailer, translated into plain English.
| What the footnote says | What it means |
|---|---|
| Free days apply to energy charges and TDU delivery per-kWh charges only; all other billed charges apply as normal. Requires a provisioned, communicating smart meter. | Free days are not free bills. Base charges and the utility’s fixed monthly charge are billed in full every month. No working smart meter, no free days. |
| The $50 bonus is a Visa prepaid card, exclusive to Free Pass 12. A redemption postcard arrives by mail; you have 90 days to redeem. The card is issued within five weeks after TXU receives payment in full of your first month’s bill; your account must be in good standing and not pending cancellation. | "Just for signing up" means: wait for a postcard, redeem within 90 days, pay your first bill in full, stay in good standing, then wait up to five more weeks. Miss a step and there is no $50. |
| Cancellation-fee reimbursement is applied as a credit on your TXU bill, "Subject to approval." You must send TXU your previous provider’s final bill. | You pay your old provider’s cancellation fee out of pocket, mail in the final bill, and TXU decides whether to approve a credit. "Covered" is conditional. |
| True Fit switches must be to another TXU plan of 12 months or longer, at least equal in length to your current plan. Switching to another provider triggers cancellation fees. The footnote ends: "Multifamily customers only." | "Change your plan anytime for free" means TXU-to-TXU only, into an equal-or-longer contract. And the footnote’s last three words limit the whole guarantee to multifamily customers. If you live in a single-family house, the mailer’s own fine print suggests this guarantee is not for you. |
| Fixed rate. Minimum term 12 months. Early cancellation fee $150. | Leaving before 12 months costs $150. That is the fee the "switch with confidence" pitch stays quiet about. |
Why you got this letter
The back of the mailer carries a legally required notice: this is a prescreened offer, with an opt-out citing TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax. Translation: TXU bought a marketing list built from credit-bureau data, and you were on it. You did not ask for this offer. Your credit file did.
If you want off those lists, the bureaus run one official opt-out: call 1-888-567-8688 or visit optoutprescreen.com. It stops prescreened credit and insurance offers. It will not stop all junk mail, but it stops this kind.
What to do instead
For contrast, here is the live Oncor market on the day we published (August 2026). The cheapest all-in plan at 1,000 kWh was 7.0 cents per kWh, but it earns that number with a bill credit that punishes you in low-usage months; bill-credit plans cut both ways. The cheapest flat plan with no credits and no tiers was 13.2 cents at 1,000 kWh. Every plan below publishes its full Electricity Facts Label before you enroll.