Friday, June 22, 2018

GRUMBLIN' -- NET NEUTRALITY -- FLAGGIN' HUCKSTERISM



SPRING IS SPRUNG AND SUMMER'S HERE!
It's gonna be hotter than Hades all too soon.
Stay cool is the motto!


California’s Net Neutrality bill which a few other states are similarly considering adopting, as mentioned in my previous post, has passed our State legislature, but ….. the bill’s content has been watered down by an Assemblyman in the predominant political party, allegedly to appease commercial donors who will benefit, as described by Tristan Greene here. 

Guess it’s just a coincidence that some of the Assemblyman’s biggest donors are AT&T, Comcast and Charter.   Internet users will still be at risk for being subjected to favoritism to the big boys now.   As if we didn’t already know, there are individuals in both of our major political parties who fail to represent the best interests of the rank and file citizen.   What are their constituents going to do about them come election time?  


My phone rings.  Appears to be a local area number.  Since I’m expecting some calls I chose to answer the phone rather than allow it to go to my answering machine.    I soon discern this is a recording with the female alarmist voice warningly announcing words to the effect, “Your use of electricity has been flagged as using more than your neighbors!” 

Is this the electric company calling me, I wonder?  The recording doesn’t say.  I think it’s a sales pitch from some commercial company, but how do they know how much electricity I’m using?  What do they mean I’m flagged?

I generally turn off the phone mid-sentence as soon as I recognize it’s a recorded call, but I listened this time.   I learned they are selling windows, but I must click on a number to learn more.   I disconnect instead.

I wonder, is there a connection, as I’m reminded that the electric company has been sending letters informing customers that they’re using more power than their neighbors?  I recall being curious after several months of receiving those letters as to just what was the basis of that conclusion?  Which of my neighbors was my usage being compared to?  Also, I wondered, is the utility leading up to some justification for a future rate increase, a usage penalty, or to charge such users more?

Given my inquiring mind, I had phoned that utility to ask what was the criteria they used to determine which neighbors to whom I was being compared?    They didn’t have a definitive answer for me other than just “my neighbors”.   I asked again, who were the neighbors they were comparing me to, or how did they determine which ones to which my usage should be compared?   Well, I was told, they can’t reveal such private information about customers. 

Plus, the utility representative also noted that besides, they can’t ask customers to provide other personal information about their household.   So, it’s not surprising that my further questioning revealed they don’t know how many people are in any of those households which are being compared to one another, much less other specifics, or even what electric power-using devices the households have.  Do any one of them have an electric car, for example?  Does the utility use location, or house square footage, consider tree-shaded houses versus those openly exposed to the sun?  What is the criteria?

My questions to which they had no answer also included:
Which of these neighbors are you comparing my usage to -- You mean the ones who were away for weeks, or the ones who both work and are gone long days during the week?  Or maybe you mean the ones who have long 4 day work weeks, then every weekend take trips, not returning until late Sunday night, so aren’t in their house?   Gee, what a surprise that my household might use more electricity than any of them and if I have a week-long family visitor my household really exceeds the comparative numbers.  And we still have no idea what, how few or how many digital tech devices are used in the comparison homes or mine. 

I did learn our California Public Utilities Commission apparently passed some sort of rule that has required the utility to mail customers these notices.  Mine come separately from my  bill.   I haven’t taken the time to query CPUC to see how they explain the value of this comparison that seems hardly to be providing very realistic data.   

I was told solar companies sometimes also use this sales technique of accosting homeowners by stating they’re flagged for using more of the energy than their neighbors, but, I was assured by the electric company representative, we don’t reveal to them any information about our customers’ utility usage.   So, I said, I guess then that these companies reference to “flagging” they're just making up and it's simply a sales gimmick they're foisting off on everybody as they use a bit of hucksterism. 

I expect the purpose of having the electric company send users such usage comparisons is to increase our awareness for conservation purposes, maybe to imply we should want to conform to using less electric if we want to save money, or maybe they think we’ll become competitive with our neighbors, but I find this particular type of comparison meaningless and invalid. 

Basically, it’s comparing apples and oranges because no allowance had been made for variables like number of people in the household, hours the house is actually occupied.  That’s not to mention the amount of activity occurring in the house, because if someone lives there who is inactive for any one of numerous reasons, including some due to medical reasons, such as poor blood circulation causing the person to feel cold as a relative of mine reported experiencing, they may require more heat or cooling.   

This brings another question to my mind.  How much is all this costing the electric company to create, print, compile, mail these comparison letters, including man hours expended?   Is the expense for this going to be absorbed by the utility users, or will the cost be taken out of administrative salaries or stockholder’s budget?   Don’t hold your breath on either of those charges happening.   Either way, I expect we utility users will absorb this jolt – a shock to our system – small, I suppose, but it all adds up.   

What do you think?  Am I missing something here?  Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill.    Do you encounter any data reports that just don’t seem to add up or make sense? 

15 comments:

  1. Yeah, we are told every month in our electrical bill that we use more than our neighbors. But hubby works from home 4 days a week, so...whatever. That said, we don't run our a/c year round, even when it's 72 out, like our next door neighbor, so...meh.

    In other related news, I never pick up my phone if it's not already labeled as someone I know. If there is no message from doctors, or my own credit card companies or bank, you know, a call I really need, I block the number. booyah. Fool me once, but never fool me twice when it comes to my cell phone. (and we got rid of our land lines about 6-7 years ago for this very reason.)

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    1. Probably there are no specific “neighbors” being used for comparison. It’s likely some algorithm that was devised. They then decide how much they think a household should use, but nobody has so far attempted to explain their process to me when I’ve asked.

      We had to keep our landline in the beginning for my husband’s regular Pacemaker check. Subsequently I’ve kept it because an emergency call allows them to pinpoint exactly where I am if I was unable to speak or tell them. You have someone else in your home who could make a call for you if needed as I had for so long. Unfortunately, cell phone emergency calls lack the system most places that will figure out where the caller is. In fact, an emergency call on a cell phone here, goes to a neighboring city, they ask where I am, then forward the call to my city where it should have gone in the first place, just like with my landline. So, in an emergency time is lost getting help even for the person able to tell them their location, but if the person could not speak or wasn’t intelligible they wouldn’t be able to tell the location where to send help. Even seconds can sometimes be the difference between life and death. Or, I think of the poor boy in the news recently, trapped in the back seat of his car who called for help several times but was unable to tell the responder where he was. The system was unable to provide his location, he was soon out of breath so couldn’t speak, likely passed out, and he suffocated.

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  2. Wow, I have never heard of such a thing and I use to work for a utility company. We recommended free energy surveys which would show customers how to use less power but those came with the bill. I see no reason for the comparison for as you said, there are too many variables.

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    1. Appreciate your input on this. I guess it looks good that something is being done to promote conservation which I think is important, but this way of doing it doesn’t make sense to me, unless there’s something I haven’t been told about their process.

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    2. I've never had that message from my electricity company, but if I did, I'd assume straightaway it was nonsense, because as you say, which neighbours are they referring to and how are they comparing electricity usage? I might have an all-electric household while my neighbours are using gas or heating oil for example. Just treat it with the contempt it deserves and move on!

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    3. Nick, my electric co. just sends monthly mailer with usage comparison with “neighbors”. The actual phone call I described was one of those sly ones that lead you to think they’re somehow electric co. connected, as I initially wondered, but are actually not, but just a sales pitch. I gathered from elec. co. they hadn’t provided them any info on my usage.

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  3. FYI Writing of hucksterism as I did here, this is an alert. I see we bloggers are again being visited by a devious one with no respect for blogging courtesies, who leaves a fawning comment in broken English, as was done here, which I screened first so didn’t publish. Then, at the end he includes an undesired site link in another language. These have appeared before and now I’ve seen such comments left on at least two other blogs I visited this week.

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  4. We don't get that call but do seem to be bombarded by spam. It's sneaky too as I won't recognize the number (we have caller ID) and sometimes I feel compelled to answer in case it's for my husband's consulting work. It never is. It's about a loan we need lol or political cause or something else we don't want. A few times we have tried to wait out the recording to say take us off the list. It never works.

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    1. I don’t think requests to get removed from a call list are ever respected. What has seemed to end one group calling with ever changing callers was when i kept saying oh, we don’t trust them — wie’ll never do business with them. Some woman called back immediately three times and I didn’t answer. Finally she left a really long message on my answering machine which I only listened to first few words. She was explaining this was the new way of doing business as I thought, “not at my house it isn’t,”

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  5. Unless I recognize the caller, I don't answer my phone. Period. If it's important or necessary, the caller will leave a message. 99% of the time, the unknown number is a telemarketer or scammer. That I have to deal at all with this nonsense is irritating. Blocking them all is an exercise in futility; they have endless numbers at their disposal. But I block them nonetheless.

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    1. I rarely bother blocking cause it really is futile, as you say.

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  6. We get a lot of phone calls every day and most are telemarketers, so we never answer directly unless we're expecting a call. Our answering machine answers after two rings and if the call is really for us we pick up then. Often the caller just hangs up without leaving a message.

    Apparently caller ID encourages this sort of thing because someone makes a profit every time the ID is checked. Fortunately we don't bother with that. Screening calls via the answering machine works just fine.

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    1. There are certain calls that cause phone to ring steadily for much longer than usual, then no one there if answered. Will ring again if not answered often followed by a high-pitched squeal similar, but not the same, to a dialed fax number made erroneously to a phone.

      I just look at phone I.D. on portable phone screen that appears automatically on all unblocked-by-caller incoming calls if I’m so inclined, otherwise I, too, let the answering machine take care of them.

      Thanks for stopping by.

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  7. I'm going to be really bummed if California breaks into three states because, it being the world's six largest economy, it does so much good as one state.

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    1. I don’t think most Californians will support dividing our State into three, or even two separate States anymore than Texas ever has breaking up their State.

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