Since the fall, we’ve been getting calls and door-to-door visits about natural gas. Since I don’t really care, nor want to pay attention to this, I just let them give their talk (and they talk really quickly as if they don’t want you to understand) and then send them on their way. Well yesterday they interrupted my Warcraft game so I finally took the time to figure out what the heck they were talking about.

So what they want us to do is sign a Natural Gas Price Protection Plan and pay the same price for our gas for the next five years. That’s great because as you may have heard, the price of gas is going up (and not just petro). Now they mentioned a whole lot of junk about you staying with your current gas company, only the supplier is different etc; basically nothing’s going to change and you will benefit.

I’ve figured out the scam now, and I’ll let you in on it so pay attention. The thing that struck me as odd was that they were targetting student housing. I don’t live that far from campus, so they must know that students live in these houses. Why were they doing this? Next I took a little look at our rates, seems like I’m currently paying about 30¢/m³ while they’re offering a rate of about 45¢/m³. That’s 150% the going rate!

They try and pull a fast one by you by offering savings over five years, which is not very helpful for the one year that I have the lease for. They play up the benefits and rely on the fact that we students don’t care about our Natural Gas bill. Well if I have to pay 150% of the normal rate, then I do care.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: corporations, uwaterloo.ca