How to Save the World and Money AT THE SAME TIME!

On Saturday, I mentioned switching to an environmentally-friendly energy company. I spent much of Saturday looking at the prices and when Monday morning rolled around, I called and made the switch.

Unfortunately, prices had gone up over the weekend and now it was going to cost more than our original provider. But, there are no service changes (our original provider usually has around $10 in service charges per month) and I figured it’d be about even. And after all, I was committed to saving the environment. How can you put a price on having an earth left for your children?

On Tuesday, our original provider called to let us know that they’d been notified of the switch and wanted to know why we were leaving them and if there was anything they could do to convince us to stay (aka: why are you taking your lovely money away? And how can we keep taking your lovely money from you?).

I explained that I’d watched “An Inconvenient Truth” and now would be powering my house by riding a stationary bicycle. I was kidding, of course; I have not seen Al Gore’s Oscar-winning movie. Anyway, I explained about making the decision to move to clean energy and she told me that, lo and behold, they too had a 100% pollution-free option. And a better price (12.9 cents compared to the other company’s 14.1 cents which is a difference of around $10-20 per month). And, for the privilege of continuing to take our money, they’d give us a $50 credit.

Well, you can bet I called 100% pollution-free, hippy-dippy, expensive power company right up and asked them not to switch me after all (I had three days to choose before they would charge me a cancellation fee of $150). And I felt even more justified when the customer service rep was ultra-snooty on the phone about my decision to take my money elsewhere.

So, basically I just made myself some money. And I’ll still get to feel good about powering my house via clean energy. And if the hippy-dippy company wants to give me a lower offer, well, I’ll just take them right up on it. In fact, I’ll continue to let the two companies battle for my business until they are paying me for the privilege of powering my smoothie-making blender every morning.

Similar Posts

12 Comments

  1. I hope you’re still in your 3 day window with this new company too. I just signed up today with Direct Energy’s wind plan for 12.2 cents/kwh. They charge a monthly $5 service fee. Their number is 888-305-3828 if you’re interested.

  2. Hi! I’m new here, but was curious… is this wind energy or some other type? I’m an environmental dork 🙂

  3. Okay I’ve got to ask… who are the companies. We’re switching apartments soon and I’m debating.
    Did I mention you and Bart should take a weekend trip to Dallas? We’d do our very best to entertain you while playing Settlers & Ticket to Ride.

  4. I show An Inconvenient Truth to my freshman comp class and make them analyze its use of ethos, logos, and pathos. It’s a romp.

  5. Wow, go you. Way to get the best deal AND use clean energy. I look forward to owning my own place someday so I can make decisions about things like energy companies.

  6. I would love to know which company you went with. I also live in Austin and I had no idea there was a “green” solution.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *