Rage against the Machine

Warning: this post may contain an impolite amount of caps. Not at you, but at the EVIL DIRECT ENERGY!


My Rant


We've all heard of hidden fees. I saw a commercial the other day about them. A hotdog stand is advertising $1 hotdogs, so a man gets one. His total is something like $5. It turns out all the toppings are extra, and there might even be some admisistration fee or something (I didn't make it the whole way through the commercial). For some reason, I have always thought that hidden fees only applied to cell phones. I WAS WRONG. Even electricity and natural gas suppliers have hidden fees. So hidden, in fact, that they don't show up on the bill.


Last summer, a nice man from Direct Energy showed up at our door. He knew a way for us to save money. If we switched to a non-regulated plan, we would save $6.50 a month in admin fees, and possibly more from the cost of electricity and natural gas. While $6.50 doesn't sound like a lot, Rob and I are trying to save money wherever we can. Every little bit we save on utilities and such can go toward things useful and necessary like, oh, FOOD. So, we switched.


From then on, our Direct Energy bills have gone up. A lot. 40% up. At first we thought maybe the price of natural gas had just gone up, or maybe the government had set its regulated cap higher this year. So we payed outrageous bills ALL. WINTER. LONG. I put thick plastic up over the windows and we keep the temperature in our house pretty low, all to save us money. $5 here, $10 there. Oh I just want to scream!


Tired of paying so much to heat our little house, Rob finally did some research online. Yes, the plan we are on does save us the $6.50 admin charge, but then THEY charge us an admin fee PER GJ USED, just for the privilege of having the first fee waived. They don't put that on the bill, just the higher rate, the final amount we have to pay. We were paying an EXTRA $110 a month! I lay awake for hours last night, just fuming.


The nice salesman had never said a word about the fee per GJ, our bills likewise never explained why the rate was so high. Were we supposed to just know? Did they assume we had ESP? A chatty help icon that would tell us the answer to a question we didn't even know we had to ask?


Needless to say, we're switching back to the old plan.