There we were, doing the environment a big favour. With just the two of us at home now, the additional porch refrigerator – some 20 years old, but still ticking away – seemed wasteful and redundant. In fact, the literature from the Ontario Power Authority suggested that old, second unit was consuming 75 per cent more electricity than a newer one might, i.e. costing us $150 more a year to operate. So an OPA truck had arrived to haul the power-sucker away. Almost the same day I opened a piece of mail:
“Secure your electricity rate for the next five years,” it announced. And “instantly benefit from the $50 bonus cheque enclosed.”
Yes, that’s right. There was a juicy cheque attached. And I immediately thought out loud, “Great! Here’s a rebate to partially compensate for some of the hefty electricity bills we’ve paid in recent years.” It was made all the more official-looking since the letter and the cheque were made out specifically to the two of us.
But wait a minute! It’s not a government cheque. It’s not a rebate.
Upon closer examination, my wife and I realized this was a sales pitch. Here was this letter – addressed directly to us – from Direct Energy. It’s the multi-national corporation that buys and sells energy and services, including gas and electricity across North America. And it wasn’t giving us a rebate. No. It was offering its so-called “Electricity Price Protection Plan,” guaranteeing our electricity rate would remain at 8.59 cents per kilowatt hour for five years. All I had to do was endorse the cheque and give them a toll-free call and the deal was done!
I don’t know about you, but we get a lot of sales pitches in the mail – retail flyers, charity drive envelopes, direct-mail announcements and even packages with a gazillion redeemable coupons. But none has ever included a cashable cheque made out in our names.
It made me wonder. If I were a senior on a fixed income or a single parent trying to make ends meet or perhaps a person not entirely fluent in English, how might I have reacted to this enclosure? I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to imagine many recipients of this letter would dash to the bank and deposit or cash the cheque before the sender changed his mind. And that, consequently, would be tacit commitment to the five-year deal.
With those concerns in mind, I made a few phone calls.
First I called Veridian, the electricity supplier to whom we quarterly pay for power. When I explained the letter and cheque to the customer service rep, I could hear her guard go up. “We supply electricity and bill you,” she said. “We have nothing to do with that plan.”
OK, but then I asked her about Direct Energy’s claim that its fixed rate of 8.59 cents per kilowatt hour would save me money. She told me that I’d recently paid 5.3 cents up to 600 k/hr and 6.2 cents for consumption above that. Now, I’m no mathematician, but I sensed that the difference between Veridian’s rates – even in high consumption periods such as winter cold-snaps and summer heat waves – and the Direct Energy bonus cheque, would not compensate the higher five-year fixed rate.
Meantime, I called the Ontario Energy Board (in the Ontario Ministry of Energy). The representative affirmed that the cheque was not from the government. She said that Direct Energy had conducted a similar campaign several years ago, using cheques “with very light printing” and was told to enlarge and darken the print for consumers. She said another campaign had enclosed voided $100 cheques. She also said she was receiving, on average, four or five complaint calls every day over the current Direct Energy campaign.
Finally, I placed a call to Direct Energy itself. Well not really. The people I phoned to question about the cheque and the five-year Electricity Protection Plan turned out to be a tele-marketing firm called S.P. Data in Toronto. When I suggested I’d like to speak with Direct Energy’s marketing department, about the nature of the sales promotion, she said she couldn’t help me. I placed a call to Direct Energy’s vice-president of marketing, but got no answer before this writing.
All I suggest is that you look before you leap. And if you react as I did, be as proactive on this issue as you are about sending those second-unit fridges to the scrap heap. Maybe bad business practice will go there too.
