Yes, I know, never sign a contract at your door, but......

In My Humble Opinion
1

Tonight, for the first time ever, I signed a contract (which I can cancel if I change my mind within 30 days) for what appears to be a cheaper electricity rate.

I asked question, I got answers. The guy was wearing ID and I also spoke to a customer service rep on the phone.

So, Googling this company, people have said it’s a scam, but I don’t know how.

I heat with a forced air electric furnace. My electricity rates here in Ottawa have been through the roof over the last couple of years, so much so that I can’t really even keep up, although I’m trying.

We have a time-of-use policy with my current provider. The rates are as follows:

On-peak - 16.1 cents per KWH
Mid-peak - 12.2 cents per KWH
Off-peak 8.0 cents per KWH

The summer hours for the above are:
On-peak - 11am - 5pm
Mid-peak - 7am -11am and 5pm-7pm
Off-peak - 7pm - 7am and weekends and holidays

The winter hours for the above are:
On-peak - 7am -11am and 5pm-7pm
Mid-peak - 11am - 5pm
Off-peak - 7pm - 7am and weekends and holidays

I know this is a lot to take in. As you can see, the winter heating rates, and the summer cooling rates are essentially switched. I have no air conditioning.

This company is offering me a blended rate of 8.79 cents per hour at all times. I believe this should be a huge savings for me in the winter when, even with a programmable set-back thermostat my bills have been HUGE. Like, I’m talking $700 - $800 a month in the winter. The furnace runs about 14 hours a day and can’t help but run in peak hours at 16.1 cents per hour.

I was informed that all other delivery charges would remain the same. So, if it’s a scam, what am I missing? Maybe if you don’t heat with electricity the savings will never materialize? But, most people cool with electricity and there should still be a savings??

2

I’m not sure what the scam is exactly, but after more Googling I just sent a cancellation email to them.

I’m pissed off with $800 a month electricity bills and got blinded by their promises. Guess I just hope this winter is milder.

3

Why don’t you use natural gas instead?

4

Obviously not available in my location.

5

I’ve always found that the delivery fees make changing providers not worth it. It’s definitely not going to be 8.79 after delivery fees. But you still might end up paying less overall with this other company.

Usually these contracts are a gamble. You sign up for 8.79 across the board…and then your existing provider’s price goes way down and you don’t get as much of a savings. Or it goes way up and you get a great savings! But you’re in for a year or two so you can’t play the market you’re stuck.

There’s so many different providers to choose from, at least in my town. It’s like looking for the best cell phone deal. I can’t follow it. I just stick with “default.”

I don’t think you fell for a scam, FWIW.

6

Check into propane. Where I live you don’t need a permit for a propane bottle of 100 gallons or less. Propane runs 91,600 BTU/gallon and a 20 or 30,000 BTU ventless indoor heater will heat a good sized number of cubic feet. You just pay one time for the company to install the tank and hook up your appliances to it then you only pay when you fill up the tank–and my deal is that I only pay for the gas, there’s no delivery charge. I have a tankless water heater and a stove running on propane and since February I’ve only managed to bring the tank down about 13%.

If you figure the math out, a 20K BTU heater running flat out nonstop will take about 366 hours to use up a full 100 gallon tank. A propane tank is only filled to 80% of capacity, btw. So running 24/7 you’d fill up the tank every two weeks or so. My winter rate for propane is usually less than $2.89, but let’s just use that for the sake of argument. You’d buy 80 gallons every two weeks and that would cost about $230.00 or $460.00/month to heat your house. Now that assumes your heater never shuts off, it’s at full bore all the time–not likely. Therefore, even assuming worst case scenario, propane heat would save you considerable money. Electric heating is about as expensive as it gets most places, gas of some sort is much cheaper and if you don’t have natural gas available, it’s damned likely you do have propane as a resource.

Worth looking into, anyway, much better that shady contract schemes.

7

I’m not sure. There are a lot of negative comments for this company regarding scams, but again I don’t know what the scam specifically is. On paper, it looks like I could save money, but the Google search comments don’t seem to support that.

8

Is wood heating in the winter just not possible or are you closer to Ottawa than I thought?

9

I do have a wood stove in the basement. I did not buy wood last year. I’m the only one living here now after my separation and figured my energy prices would drop considerably. Instead I’m paying double what I did a few years ago when 4 people were living here. Somehow I need to find a way to get some wood this year. I did not expect back-to-back record cold winters. The price of wood has skyrocketed too though, as other energy prices have risen. Still, I will be looking for wood this fall. It may be too late at this point though.

And in the mean time I need to sell this money pit!

10

Just wait for a moonless night, and then tap into the mains of Da Swisha or Chalk. Problem solved.

11

Seriously, though, if you can get your hands on a chain saw and a hydraulic splitter, you can save on wood costs if you buy a load of logs, spend a weekend in the fall (cool and no bugs) sawing and splitting yourself, and then let the wood dry out for a year before using it.

12

Sure, but I’m trying to get out of this place and that ain’t gonna happen.

13

And there’s the rub. Going through a divorce I, have little spare money left over. I am going to sell this place, and although a propane furnace would be a major selling point, I can’t afford to replace my existing one at the moment.

I’ve got to get some work done over the next year and get the hell out of Dodge.

14

Well, it’s a shame you are not able to upgrade your place to reduce your energy consumption.

Per this website (energystar.gov), the Fujitsu RLS3H is a heat pump that functions down to -15 farenheit and it has a seer rating of 33. That is extremely high, double what I happen to have at the moment. These are “ductless minisplits” - you would need to install one of these for each major room/region you want to condition.

The way this helps you is that since the machine’s EER and SEER ratings are somewhere around double to 50% higher than anything you are likely to have, you would probably save about half the energy usage just from that. In addition, since the heating/cooling is room/small area specific, you could heat just your bedroom when you are sleeping in it, just the kitchen when you are using it, etc. These units are programmable and have remote controls and motion sensors.

At the rates you are quoting - $700 a month, if you can cut your consumption in half, you’d save $350 a month, or a couple grand a year. Each of these units is about $1500 for the bare equipment, $2600 installed, and you would probably need somewhere between 3 and 5 of them depending on the size and layout of your house. You’d come out ahead by a fair bit, I think, but you would have to be planning to stay another 5-10 years…

15

When I’ve had those guys come to my door, they’ve always been obvious scamsters, even if I didn’t know what the scam was. Right from the start, I ask to see identification, and they don’t have anything but a lame excuse. One guy was new on the job, and his ID card was coming in a week or so. :dubious: Another guy was up from his office in Fresno (90 miles away) and his little girl sat on his card and broke it and his other card was in his office in Fresno which wasn’t open on the weekend anyway. :dubious:-squared. Instead of listening to their pitches, I asked if they had a printed brochure I could have to read at my leisure. One guy had a brochure, but just one copy so he couldn’t leave it with me. The other guy didn’t have a brochure, but I could get one after I signed up. :dubious:

I never found out exactly what deal they were selling, because I shut the door in their faces before ever getting that far. They were just obviously trolls from some fly-by-night company at best if not outright scamsters.

In each case (and others involving people from the “telephone” company) I called the apartment manager (the kind of person who was a real kick-ass bitch toward anyone in need of a good ass-kicking), and she kicked their asses off of the property.

16

There were well-intentioned laws passed to give new companies access to the distribution networks of the traditional gas and electric companies.

What you are seeing is scammers who buy huge chunks of utilities and re-sell them.

If they produce their own gas/electricity, they might be able to undersell the local monopoly.

But these folks are just marking up the rates you pay - they buy the stuff form the same people you are dealing with - and making a profit in the process.

When the salesperson wants your utility account number, they are not acting in your best interest.

17

Not a furnace, a freestanding ventless heater that runs on propane. Like this one, for example. The idea is to use a heater like this instead of using an electric powered full house furnace, which is ridiculously expensive. If you’re forking over $800 a month in electricity to heat the house, using something like this instead (and, since you’re not using all of the house, closing off rooms that don’t need to be heated on a regular basis) would save you a considerable amount of money. And you can, if you want to go REALLY cheap, buy a couple of 40lb tanks and take them out to fill yourself. That’s more of a pain in the ass, but if you end up going through another winter in the house you could probably save yourself a couple grand by shifting over to alternative heating, and of course the heater is movable to your next house too.

18

A ventless heater that runs on propane… Now, I know that if the indoor air environment is big enough and the combustion is efficient enough…but still. That sounds like a really really bad idea.

19

Here in MN, the utility companies have rebates and incentives to reduce energy consumption. See what programs they have available for you. Additionally a lot of hvac companies offer financing. If you’re planning on selling, you might be able to get a no payment loan for a year, the upgrade will help sell the house, and you pay fromthe proceeds.

20

These people come through my neighborhood once every year.

Sometimes they try to say they’re from my actual provider and demand to see my last statement to “check” something. Why the fuck would they need to see a statement they sent me?! (I believe the scam in this instance is they get my account number, change over my service without my consent, then spend the next 6 months stalling while I try to get it switched back)

The other ploy is the more straightforward “alternate provider” at a lower rate. They always specify my power is “still coming from PEPCO, but at a lower rate.” I don’t see how this is possible. If my power is still coming from PEPCO, how does paying someone else for it lower my rate, rather than just paying PEPCO directly? Not a scam, but not necessarily honest (in the way they’re selling it) either.

I give them 10 seconds to get off of my property before I call the police and go to get my gun.

I don’t actually own a gun, but they don’t know that.