Earlier this week, I consulted with my brother over an offer from Reliant to “lock in” a 5% discount against the fuel adjustment fee, now that the 14% discount they were offering was about to expire. The reason they were giving was that natural gas prices hadn’t dropped like they had predicted, and so this offer would allow the customer to continue getting at least some discount.
After researching various rate offers on the net, we were disinclined to accept the offer; the billing structure is not that confusing, but the way they talked about the discount seemed designed to confuse the reader. It was a definite that if we signed up, our rate would be locked, and I had a bad feeling about that. Nobody in business is going to do you a favor; at best they might make a decent offer to beat out competition. At worst, you, the customer, might be tempted with a “great offer” that was anything but. I felt this was such a case; if they were trying to lock the current rate in, they were betting on lower natural gas prices in the near future.
I was spot on. Except that it’s already happening.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me not at all… “Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!”
H/T to Tom Kirkendall
Having worked for Reliant, I’d be about as likely to trust them as to… well, work for them again.
Ok, maybe if they paid me a _lot_. Executive level, I mean. And I’d want a nice office in one of the Enron buildings. And build giant energy-storing flywheels that would eventually run amuck (ok, my real motivation comes out).