It's Not For ME, It's For YOU

I am growing wearing of businesses trying to do me a favor. Let's face it. When was a business ever interested in helping customers, rather than themselves? As I used to tell my students after an obvious question: "Let me answer for you." The answer, in this case, is NEVER! Businesses are not in business to "help" the customers. They are in business to make money for themselves.

A couple days ago, I got an email from my electric company. They've been trying for many months to "persuade" us to switch our billing to some kind of "saver" option. Rate options, where we will be billed differently for daytime and nighttime hours. Supposedly helping ourselves by running the washer/dryer and dishwasher during "off-peak" times. 

Well. We have no dishwasher. We already do our laundry in the evenings. And the comparison graph they sent us showed that we would actually SAVE two dollars a month by keeping our billing as is, with the same rate charge over 24 hours. So why in the Not-Heaven would we want to switch? They did this automatically with our other accounts, like the two flip houses. Not a big enough deal to try and change it back, because we don't use that much electricity there, and hopefully won't have those properties much longer. 

Here are some quotes from that email:

SAVE BIG without lifting a finger. It's easy and rewarding to ease energy demand! ENROLL TODAY.

When you sign up for Peak Time Savings, your smart thermostat will make temporary adjustments to help ease energy demand. You won't have to lift a finger! And enrolling comes with a lot of bonuses--like a $50 enrollment bonus and an annual $25 appreciation bonus every year you stay enrolled. SIGN UP NOW.

REALLY? You want to PAY people to enroll in this program? What's in it for YOU? Let me give my opinion. This will only profit the electric company. I will have my AC or heat cut during a heavy energy usage time. So I'm "helping" by sweating or freezing as my regular thermostat settings are changed by my "smart" thermostat. Which will save money for the electric company.

Yesterday, I got a different email. It included an itemization of "Your Energy Use By Appliance." 

Always On.................................$15

Water Heating.............................$6

Refrigeration...............................$3

Cooking......................................$2

Laundry.......................................$1

Lighting.......................................$1

Here's the thing. This bill was $39.73, and it was for the BARn. The rest of the total is a fee for "summer usage." Yeah. There's also a fee for "winter usage" that will soon replace this one. It goes from one to the other. Apparently there are only two seasons for our electric company!

Let the record show that the BARn has no water heater. No running water at all! There IS a refrigerator. But no source of cooking. No source of laundry. The light is on the front of the BARn. And if Hick is working over there, he turns on the inside lights. So at least three of those six itemizations are a flat-out LIE!

I told Hick, and he said, "Well, they are just using percentages to justify the bill." What in the NOT-HEAVEN is that supposed to mean??? It's misleading! How can we trust anything they send us purporting to explain our actual electricity usage?

It's not like we are extravagant with our energy usage. In the house, whose bill is of course more expensive than that of the BARn, the thermostat is set on 74 degrees for the AC, and 70 degrees for heat. I prefer it to stay that way, and not be fiddled-with by a Smart Meter.