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If you live in a state that allows you to choose your supplier (as distinct from the distributor — the company you pay your bill to) you will find those alternative suppliers sending you offers to entice you to switch. Often they will emphasize they use renewable energy or some such. And their rate per Kwh may be less than you pay now.
These offers can be — to put it mildly — deceptive.
I use one such alternative supplier, but not the one in the picture below, and thought this was from them:
Notice the first box, “This is our way of THANKING you for ENJOYING 6 months of SmartEnergy…” Both capitalized verbs are in the present, NOT future tense. As such, one could rationally assume (if you did have an alternative supplier), that this was the promised reward.
This ‘we are looking forward’ sentence reinforces that.
But this is not a reward for being a customer at all, it is a PLOY to get you to sign up with their company., so that they can switch your supplier.
When you call the number listed, they will try to get you to switch companies using weasel-worded phrases to keep you thinking you’re already a customer. In fact, it wasn’t until they kept asking for my West Penn account number that alarm bells went off. Why would they need the account number again since that’s how they get paid? Well, after much arguing and deflections, it turned out that they were NOT my current supplier. Surprise, surprise.
I had received similar notices, but the words ‘AFTER 6 months’ had always been in the notice. This is deceptive advertising, and I forcibly told them so.
Caveat emptor!
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