Utility shenanigans

[MikeD74T]

I posted this to see where else in the country this was happening to the extent its happening here.

On the NH seacoast, i.e. Hampton Beach, this has been going on for at least 30 years that I'm aware of. Seasonal businesses that "demand" a lot of power for their 10 week season require substantial infrastructure. The demand only hits them disproportionately in the off season and then only if they use beyond a minimum amount kws for greater than a 15 minute period during the month. During spring startup & fall shutdown of several businesses I would open all the breakers and energize loads systematically to stay below the minimum and avoid the "demand surcharge". Since these businesses need the power in season the demand charge allowed them to have things like security systems, sump pumps, & a few lights in the off season rather than turning off all the power. Every owner cried like a baby if they went over the minimum without any income being produced. MikeD74T

 

[dave1949]

"Oh, its not us, we are dictated by the state to charge this amount"

You do live in the US don't you. To my knowledge the Federal Governement nor State Governments tell a business how much to charge for a product or service. They regulate some service to prevent such charges as you describe. I remember years ago when we had good telephone service from AT&T. AT&T was regulated. Everyone got to hollering as loud as they could, DE-REGULATE". An executive with AT&T made the statement well there goes good cheap and affordable telephone service and his comments in my opinion have become true. The purchasing public is being ripped every day by our good - good business people.

It's complicated and I don't think all the blame goes either way. For residential electric and land-line phone service rates, those are regulated by a state's Public Utility Commission I believe. I am not sure if that applies to commercial accounts.

Phone service was very simple under the Ma Bell system and Bell Labs certainly cranked out some great technology over the years. On the other hand, the explosion in the past 20 years of user level communication technology may not have been so easy or affordable under a Ma Bell monopoly.

Some of the same trade-offs apply to the airlines pre and post de-regulation.
Dave.

 

[Ken45101]

Phone service was very simple under the Ma Bell system and Bell Labs certainly cranked out some great technology over the years.

Yes...and Ma Bell told us that 300 baud hardwired modems was all we needed and all they would allow. And you could only add Ma Bell extensions to your home phone.

Bell was far from perfect.

Ken

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I've only seen it here on commercial, not on residential.

 

[dave1949]

Yes...and Ma Bell told us that 300 baud hardwired modems was all we needed and all they would allow. And you could only add Ma Bell extensions to your home phone.

Bell was far from perfect.

Ken

How fast does your teletype run? I know Bell was not perfect, which I noted in the sentence you did not include. It may have been the right medicine, historically, to get telecom off the ground. Can you imagine trying to achieve national communications with dozens/hundreds of providers using incompatible technology?
Dave.

 

[Ken45101]

How fast does your teletype run? I know Bell was not perfect, which I noted in the sentence you did not include. It may have been the right medicine, historically, to get telecom off the ground. Can you imagine trying to achieve national communications with dozens/hundreds of providers using incompatible technology?
Dave.

I was wrong with my numbers, it's been about 40 years now since the Bell stranglehold was broken.

Bell modems limited us to 150 baud (Teletype was 110 baud). To get past the Bell 150 baud modems, we had to use acoustic couplers which let us get all the up to 300 baud! Bell, with their monopoly, wanted to keep us at 150 baud. (For comparison, today's landline modems can reach 56,000 baud).

Ken

 

[dave1949]

I was wrong with my numbers, it's been about 40 years now since the Bell stranglehold was broken.

Bell modems limited us to 150 baud (Teletype was 110 baud). To get past the Bell 150 baud modems, we had to use acoustic couplers which let us get all the up to 300 baud! Bell, with their monopoly, wanted to keep us at 150 baud. (For comparison, today's landline modems can reach 56,000 baud).

Ken

What used to get me about AT&T, was they would never admit it when they had a line problem. So our customers would look at us like - can't you fix your equipment? After enough complaining, things would start working magically - but they would never admit to fixing their problems. Very frustrating knowing you are wasting your time and getting the blame for AT&T.
Dave.

 

[ultrarunner]

What used to get me about AT&T, was they would never admit it when they had a line problem. So our customers would look at us like - can't you fix your equipment? After enough complaining, things would start working magically - but they would never admit to fixing their problems. Very frustrating knowing you are wasting your time and getting the blame for AT&T.
Dave.

Sooo true!

I had on going problems for years and my 300 baud modem would drop out at times... also static.

AT&T would do nothing...

I signed-up when they offered DSL to my area and what a blessing... It took over a week before they gave up and ran a new line from several blocks away... the supervisor was amazed I had phone service with what I had... I told him that I could tell him lots of stories if he had the time!

 

[Taylortractornut]

We have TVA supplied power and dont have the peak hour usage rates. Usually the house is 50 to 60 per months in the winter and the shop[ runs about 20 to 45. Our house meter is a remote read deal and the shop is a manual read one. My biggest problem was I hadnt been to the shop for a whole month I had pulled the main because I had been getting higher bills like a 100 bucks for one month and I hadnt been in the shop for an hour that month. The next month rolled around 85 bucks. I had a meeting then. The meter reader that make 21 dollars an hour had been estimating the meter. The lead man came out and veiwed my meter with the logged hours to my statement and they really adjusted it and gave me a small break on it.

year before last the same power company had a problem with the remote read meters to. My wifes grandmother lived in a new trailer with all gas apliances and heat. she had AC in the living room which she lived there since her husband passed away. She called my wife crying had a 600 dollar power bill. She was about to pay it when we went to the Power company with the problem they immediatkley fixed it. THere was several houses in that area that even had 750.00 bills.

 

[dave1949]

My wifes grandmother lived in a new trailer with all gas apliances and heat. she had AC in the living room which she lived there since her husband passed away. She called my wife crying had a 600 dollar power bill. She was about to pay it when we went to the Power company with the problem they immediatkley fixed it. THere was several houses in that area that even had 750.00 bills.

What is so sad about that is it takes very little programming effort for a billing program to kick out a list of probable exceptions for human follow-up. It is what any reasonable person would do if they were doing manual billing and saw a bill that was 5 to 6 times higher than normal. We don't really use the power of computing very smartly sometimes.
Dave.