My town defaulted on our only free public charger’s electricity bill
Ya dont make a trillion dollars by splurging on luxuries like running water
Ohh shit, that's why I'm poor . . .
Ever notice the most expensive companies have 1 ply toilet paper?
And pay their staff fuck all.
And always have outstanding invoices.
I came into work last week to find every tv displaying a Direct TV notification that service was disconnected.
Bout fell outta my chair laughing.
My boss must’ve heard me making jokes that autopay exists/no wonder we don’t get raises.
They just shut off the TVs and gave me the stink eye the rest of the day.
Don’t care. Totally worth it.
I work for a multi-billion dollar company. Standard invoice payment is net 45 and it takes multiple signatures, including CFO, and very specific reasons to get net 30. Problem is net 45 is just to start the approval process to pay the invoice. So by the time it gets approved, processed, cut the check, and mail it out it’s at net 60. So the company that invoiced us really gets the check 65-75 days after the due date. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that net 45 is based on the due date, not the day the invoice is received. Ironically, when we were much much smaller, the owners (private business at the time) ensured everything was paid the same week we got the invoice, no matter the due date. Then they sold the business and now that it’s worth way more, everything is paid 2-3 months late. SMH I’ll never understand that
It’s good for cash flow on paper
On the flip side, these same companies are trying hard to negotiate lower payment dates for people paying THEM. It's an odd system.
Are you surprised by companies being selfish? It’s odd but explainable by greed haha
No, I'm not at all, but it is funny being in a meeting where the boss is pushing for us to push out our net terms for paying and, simultaneously, bring in our net terms for getting paid.
I know why they do it, but and I go along with what the boss says, but at the same time it makes you think if everyone is doing this, it's not going to work very well.
60-75 days after the due date!?!? That’s ridiculous. Sounds like their vendors need to start charging interest on the invoices to correct that behavior.
We got hit with a nearly $50k late fee because of our office manager's reluctance (laziness) to pay for reagents for lab equipment. The lab manager isn't allowed access to any sort of expense or credit card, it all goes through her. No more Net30 or 90, it's all paid ahead of time now.
She's also failed to pay our internet bill which very nearly got cut off until I threatened to walk out because I wasn't going to deal with the weeks of work it'd take to update equipment, external vendors, VPNs (I'd likely have to go to some remote sites), etc. Once we lose service, those static IPs get released into the void never to be seen again, we'd get issued a dozen new ones.
The amount we waste on late fees/interest pays nearly my entire salary because she can't be assed to do her job. But she's been working with the CEO for 25 years so literally can do no wrong in his eyes.
Wtf. What do they do if a vendor comes asking right after the due date when it will be paid because you know, it’s the due date….? I’d be pissed if I were your vendors. It’s good for your companies cash flow on paper, but terrible for your vendors and can cause real problems….
it’s the due date
Putting a date on an invoice isn't magic, due dates only exist through the ability or will to enforce them. If you don't sue for payment then your recourse is asking nicely again or withdrawing whatever services you offer them.
When some companies are in a strategically disadvantageous position with a vendor they can use this strategy to claw back some power in the relationship. You just stay permanently 3-12 months behind on your invoices saying it's being tied up by red tape internally or something. It's a big chunk of cash for the vendor and they know it's likely coming down the pipeline, but they're never in a position where they could just drop you without your 6 months of revenue suddenly being on the other side of legal action.
I worked for a ritzy big name prep school that charged 60k a year for high school and some lady forgot to pay the utility bill to the point of disconnection. Class was cancelled for the day
I worked for a multi-hospital healthcare system on a $100M software installation project. When it came time for their bond rating they needed to increase their cash on hand to get a better rating. So what do they do? They stopped paying their water and electricity bills for just under six months. Those companies couldn't legally turn those services off, and it would take at least that long to start the legal process. So they calculated exactly how long it would take for those unpaid bills to hit their rating, subtracted 15 days, and sat on that cash.
As a water shut off guy I will ABSOLUTELY shut off the bank if they have a high outstanding balance and are scheduled for turn off.
$13k+ owed LOL!
I don't know how long this has been installed, but I guarantee you they severely underestimated how much this charger would be used or how much it would cost.
Ya I know some people with electric vehicles and they can be really funny with money, like they will go pay $50k for a tesla then they will cheap out on getting a charger installed in the garage and will spend years trying to figure out where the free chargers are in the city. One person I know sends the car with a relative to work once a week to get a charge. To me I find this ironic because the best feature of a electric car to me is not needing to go out of my way to charge it, having it always in the garage charged would be the big win. But somehow these people will take the best feature and make it the worst.
There are definitely people that do that, but they are the same goofballs that will drive 10 miles out of their way to save $0.05 on gas. Unfortunately I think the allure of saving money attracts them to EVs. One of the best features for normal people is definitely not stopping for fuel.
I don't know about right now, but within recent history there were people driving from San Diego across the border to Mexico to buy cheaper gasoline. There's no way that's cheaper when time is factored in.
These kinds of people never factor in the cost of their time! My mom will drive 25 minutes across town to save 10¢/gallon , and when I'm like "that's not saving you money" she shows me the math on the gas and shows that it saves like $1.37 or whatever I just sigh. She just doesn't get she's selling her time for $2.74 an hour. I try to explain it but she just doesn't get it.
You are also burning gas there and back and literally exploding all of your savings.
Plus the wear and tear on the vehicle.
There's plenty of people that lease cars like rentals. At the end of the lease there's no tread, pads; shit, even oil left in the thing.
She just doesn't get she's selling her time for $2.74 an hour.
The monetary value of time only really matters if you would have made your regular income otherwise. There is no opportunity cost if there is no opportunity.
It's a fair point though that time taken can negate the fun value of savings. My housemates and I used to work through an itemised phone bill to split the bill, but it became obvious doing that was more painful than just dividing it equally between us.
My office's garage has around 10 chargers that we can use. There's a group of people that are constantly trying to get to the office earlier and earlier so they can charge for free. Meanwhile, I'm sleeping in while my car is fully charged in the garage. There's no way that I'm going to spend an extra couple hours at work just to get a bit of a discount on my electricity bill.
how much does installing and maintaining a charger at home cost?
In hindsight, I would have just used the mobile charger that came with my car and plugged it into a NEMA 14-50 dryer outlet. They charge a bit slower, but it doesn't matter if you're charging overnight. I didn't realize this was an option when I had my charger installed.
To give you an idea of the cost... In 2019, I purchased a Tesla Wall Charger for $500 (plus $250 for an electrician to install). My electric bill went up by about $30 a month. Estimated gas savings of $1,200 a year based on my area's current gas and energy prices.
I wish I had a house/garage to charge at home. I live in an apartment so I still have to charge at public areas, though it's not so bad considering I'm getting free charging for two years at EA stations, and the Ioniq 6 charges very quickly on 150-350kW stations
Still it would be nice to just wake up to 80% charge every day.
Don’t underestimate the crazy ways people chase the thrill of getting a deal/steal. Heck there’s deal sites where thousands of posts will debate laundry detergent that’s a few dollars off even though it makes no practical sense.
It’s totally not just an EV thing. I’ve worked at tech companies with free meal programs and seen well paid tech workers go through hoops to hack a free salad bar and talk about whether filling the tub with blueberries or pure olive oil is more bang for the buck.
Heck just recently there was an infamous loop of using Instacart via Costco to deliver Instacart gift cards that could get you potentially 20 dollars per 4+ hours of effort and people still did it despite this being far below minimum wage or just picking up Uber passengers for an hour.
Any time you give away something “free” that people are willing to pay for, you’re gonna see this kind of Lord of the Flies behavior. It seems to be human nature.
Reminds me of the sub beer money , I remember a decade ago, that sub was filled with people doing the most insane stupid shit for money. Like people were literally working 10 cents an hour pay and then bragging about it and claiming it all adds up.
It's probably done by people that don't have easy access to regular work and/or have access to free time in their work.
Don’t underestimate the crazy ways people chase the thrill of getting a deal/steal.
I knew a slightly autistic guy with elementary coding skills who got hyperfocused on writing bots to fill out survey sites for giftcards.
I tried for years to warn him that it was a terrible idea, but because he hadn't been caught yet, he was convinced he would never be caught.
He ended up being fleeing to the philippines to dodge the feds charging him with extensive wire fraud.
He probably should have stayed and plead guilty for a lighter charge. I don't think he would have even gone to jail, but he's turbofucked now.
Then they go on Facebook and complain that electric cars are annoying to recharge
And here I am with a “cheap” Hyundai EV. I installed a charger in my garage but only use it once every 3 months because I can plug in at work. Costs me less than $10 to “fill up” anyways so I kinda don’t care either way.
And here I am with a model S and no charger at all, just using a regular old fashioned outlet and doing fine for years.
Cost about the same as you at $13 bucks a month.
The people in that guys comment are crazy.
I had a Tesla for a while. I found a free (slow) charger a couple blocks from my office. Once or twice a week I’d park there with an empty battery, and 8-9 hours later I’d be full. There were cars there almost continuously. Very nice perk, but at some point they caught on and starting charging. Oh well.
HOLY SHIT I didn’t even think to look at that! Good lord…
See the PG&E logo? That’s all you need to know lol
No kidding. That would be less than $5k for the same amount of power in many other parts of the country.
When I lived in the Bay area, PGE charged $0.47 PER KWH! I now pay $0.14 kWh in Nevada.
At 43-51 cents now, PGE needs to be split up, all of the smaller utilities like smud (Sacramento) or tdpud (truckee-donner) are still 13-30 cents.
Lower costs are for off peak times, higher are during peak times. Everyone being serviced by PGE is getting fucked
$.11 in West Tennessee. There’s a lot of shit they get wrong, but TVA is incredible and super reliable.
A couple years ago I was paying $0.07
It fluctuates during the year in a lot of places. I pay $.11 during the middle of summer and winter. It is around $.085ish during fall and spring though.
It’s basically a government sponsored extortion racket. When I moved from PG&E territory into SMUD territory, my summer electricity bills dropped by $250 a month. I was seriously getting $400 electric bills to cool my one bedroom apartment in Rocklin.
I love SMUD, still have PG&E for gas, but at least I don’t need a lot of that.
They should just have hooked up to solar; it would have paid for itself.
*cries in NEM 3.0*
*cries in AB 205*
*cries in extra “because we can” fees*
/s, if you can’t tell
Seriously, PGE, you suck a whole lot
Wow. Time for a little math I guess.
Given that there is a PG&E logo there and they serve the California area and the average price per KwHr in Cali is 30 cents, they were overdue on ~44,448.93 KwHr of electricity. Assuming that they are using a standard 240v 50a (12Kw) It is a 6.6 Kw level 2 EV charger, and assuming it is just the one, it has been operating for ~6,735 hours without paying the bill. Now assuming it was only actually charging a car for 25% of the time, the bill had not been paid for just over 561 days or about 1 year and 6.5 months. I know OP said it’s the only one, but I think there might be more, either that or the electric company just took a year and a half to actually disconnect it for some reason.
Edit: made some corrections
12kw would be a newer model than this one, that's a 6.6kw charger.
And you're off by a factor of 10. 44,000kwh divided by 12kw would be 3,666 hours. Or around 7,000 hours at 6.6kw.
(No way does it cost $13k for 370 hours of L2 charging, lol.
Made some corrections, ty
Guess the town also thought it was free.
I feel like they thought PG&E would never disconnect a public service. PG&E obviously does not give a fck lmao
If I had to guess the person that normally handles it retired or something and the remaining folks had no fucking idea something was owed till someone started to complain it had been shut off. Happens all the time in the business world (speaking from experience) so can’t imagine the government does any better.
There's this one report I have to do every week that requires input from a spreadsheet someone I've never met sends me. That someone stopped sending me the spreadsheet so I left that column blank for 6 months. It threw off the formulas but i didn't really think anyone looked at it anyways. Finally the guy who uses my spreadsheet to do his asked me about it, and apparently the person who sent me it stopped because she's supposed to get some numbers off of a spreadsheet from some dude that got fired. I still have no idea what any numbers on the spreadsheet actually mean or why it's my responsibility but I always found it funny that there's just like this chain of spreadsheets done by different people that only know how to do their spreadsheet instead of just having one spreadsheet guy.
You just described 90% of the corporate world lmao
Or a neural network.
None of the neurons know what is happening in the brain.
Humans are actually just one super organism.
That was my first shroom trip.
call mom in the middle to tell her the good news
That was my first bad shroom trip
wut. You tellin me that I am neuron and neuron is me?
OK, but can I just ask out of a sense of personal curiosity: what the fuck are we doing?
Yes!
Or City government...
Fr. Does my client data make any sense to me? Fuck no. Do i understand their reporting formulae? Fuck no. Doe I care to ask? No. There’s no place for learning here.
I automated that process for a place I worked at, and they fired two people. It turns out their only purpose in life was to make those spreadsheets.
I automated time sheet entry for a large labor company and they had the girl doing them go part time... I had no idea that's what she was doing half the day.
I had no idea that's what she was doing half the day.
Probably plotting revenge against the guy that caused her pay to be cut in half.
I automated that process for a guy who was starting chemo but didn't want to go on disability and is a few years from retirement.
I told him I'll keep my mouth shut if he does the same.
He has done almost no work for the last 4 years, and has gotten glowing reviews and his normal raises, pay, and bonus. He retires in December.
And you'll get to cash in when he retires.
"Hey manager, so-and-so's retirement got me thinking about ways our team can be more efficient, so I took the initiative and identified ways we can automate certain tasks"
Make sure to CC your manager's boss so he doesn't get all the credit.
No. No. No.
You volunteer to take over that responsibility and keep your dirty mouth shut for another long time.
Only if you negotiate a pay rise at the same time.
This person enterprises.
Don’t blow it for them retroactively
We need more people like you
You’re a good person.
Be hard to retire fromt that.
I automated the job of 3 guys once. It was trivial to do too. Only took 3 weeks to prod. On the bright side, we’re a big firm so they just had them do other stuff, we’re constantly short handed and bosses dont get bonuses for downsizing teams. You just find more stuff to do for your guys.
I helped automate a spreadsheet flow, which sent ten MBAs to call center jobs. 😞. So then I retired in shame.
I felt terrible once I realized what I had done.
Yeah, when I started data analysis, it was to figure out what helped kids stay in school and graduate. Then I ended up having to figure out ways to screw people over for various clients. Switched jobs to try to get back from the dark side, and found no place that wanted to use my superpowers for good. So, retired.
I feel that.
I and a partner automated a big contract-scanning function at USAA about a year and a half ago, and then found out that the person who used to have that as part of their job happened to get cut during the big layoffs last year. I've wondered whether our tool contributed to that, and I hope that person landed on her feet. She was a really nice lady when I met her, she'd been reviewing contracts for USAA since the late 90s.
Your job kind of sounds like whatever job they do in the show Severance.
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4d
You better keep quiet about that, or they'll realize they have a chain of four people whose jobs could be entirely automated
Sounds like a good method to cook the books with plausible deniability
I guess if one bean counter ever collects all of the beans, then they win and get to be the new CEO. So they've gotta disseminate the beans far and wide in order to secure their job.
Yeah you forward a bill to finance and forget about it. Six months later you get an email / phone call asking why they haven't paid. Awkward but that is not my department. I expected finance to do their job.
This is more like someone got the invoice each month and would forward to finance, he retired and now the invoices are going to a retired guys email address, not forwarded to finance, who don't care enough to be proactive/notice
When I worked in AP.
Get a call from one of our people at one of our locations.
"Vendor X is mad that Y hasn't be paid! What the hell are y'all doing?"
"What's Vendor X's company? Okay. looks up, "We haven't received an email from them in the AP email in months, did they email it to us like we tell everyone?"
"No, they didn't."
Well tell them to email the invoices to us, and remind them they can't just hand them off to someone on site.
Or when we bought sites off another company and had to merge there vendors 2-3 different times one vendor threatened to shut off things after 4-5 months of none payment because they were sending it to the only company that previously owned the sites.
I asked them why the hell, nicely, they didn't contact us after the first month or two of non-payment if they were able to contact us now.
From the AR side
Send constant statements of past due invoices.. Get no response... Account on hold now. Purchasing and Sales loses their mind. Finally get an email returned promising payment... But only after the quarter end.. fuck me
Yeah, I get ya. My first big AP job was replacing an AP Clerk who just didn't do their job for some reason, and freaking hide invoices/let them sit on their desk for months.
My boss and I had to apologise to so many AR people.
We had that problem. Our person in charge all our bookkeeping retired after like 12 years.
We got a new person in. (There was about a 3 month period where the owners daughter did the stuff. She can do it but by and large she is a stay at home mom so they were on the lookout for a fulltime person to do bookkeeping.)
Enter one of those people who talk like they can do it all and seem like they know what they are doing.
She lasted about 9 months before she decided to go run for public office.
About a month later we got our current bookkeeper. Come to find the one that had been there like 9 months had been so bad that we were down to like 2 companies we could use as a credit reference. And we have been in business like 60 years with good relationships. All heavily damaged.
At least we finally got somebody good.
A true politician, then.
We had one of those (work in local gov’t). Her name was Elvira, and she was responsible for invoices from companies with names from M-Z. We called her the Mistress of the Dark and apologized to the vendors in advance.
Serious question, what happens if a company changes its name and ends up in the other half of the alphabet?
Currently working in AP for a Shared Services company managing 16 companies. This is still the case all over. We're a one-stop shop for getting our vendor's invoices paid. But you gotta stop by the shop.
If its a retired guy there is even a large probability that that person only ever checked email at work and didn't even know how to access it at home and once they left that was it, the email is never checked again.
Older guy here. I know how to check work email from home, I just don’t. CEOs are accessible outside work hours and get paid commensurately more than I do. Pay me on call rates to be on call.
That's the great part. I handle invoices for QA lab shit even though I'm not an accountant. Company sucks is too cheap to hire a department to do this role. I'm past due on so much shit, but I actually can't be bothered to use an archaic system to enter all these invoices myself when an entire department at GOOD companies should be all over this. Like wtf.
And sure, I could spend my entire day plugging in invoices, but I also have to cover to departments, make sure documents get sent to customers, and somehow budget also?? I'm at my wits end with this lean company bullshit. Like yeah, I could totally do it all if you paid me 250k but not what I'm getting now. I clock out and go home because I have a life.
Or you don't forward it, somehow assuming the bill will magically wind up where it needs to go despite the fact you were the only person who was on the email it was sent to.
Amazingly common.
That's why Vendors are suppose to send it to the BUCKET EMAIL. IT'S NOT THAT DIFFICULT VENDORS! SEND IT TO ACCOUNTSPAYABLE @COMPANY.COM
WE'VE TOLD YOU MULTIPLE TIMES, AND YOU STILL GET MAD AT US WHEN YOU DON'T GET PAID ON TIME!
Sorry, I'm getting flashbacks from my days in Accounts Payable
Hahaha that's funny. Our "AP" person is the receptionist who has other shit to do and only getting 20/hr. We're also one of the biggest rice producers in California. This company sucks ass for not hiring people to do specialized roles they assume management will take care of.
I was blessed that the first AP job I worked had a competent AP Manager who worked hard to get a solid framework built for our department.
Other AP and Finance jobs quickly taught me that was not the norm.
TIL that rice is a significant crop in water limited CA
I didn't realize my struggle was a universal experience.
Anyone remember that guy who was caught fraudulently sending invoices to google even though he'd never worked for them. And they just kept paying it?
OH MY GOD IT'S SO AWKWARD. We had an issue with a German supplier at my work. They're probably the most efficient group we work with and they were just as efficient in letting us know that payment hadn't gone through. Some schmuck didn't pay the bill for our team. Make a few of our clients quite annoyed lol.
yep and the reverse also happens people send fraudulent bills for nothing and finance pays them without even checking if they were anything the company ever did. Alot of people like to argue and get pissed about government vs private entities but its not really either its the fact that when an organization gets so big its just easy to lose stuff and easy to have bad actors flying under the radar and even easier for the organization to be understaffed and too many people giving up.
This happened at my one work site (im municipal maintenence) . I get a call the whole rest stop, vehicle shop, salt depot, and a water tower have no power. We have Electricians all over, we have inspectors look8ng for damaged. Nothing. Literally 100s of man hours. A guy who used to be a lineman went out and looked at the poll comes running back and says we've been PHYSICALLY disconnected. Cops come. State is thinking possible terrorism charges because the water tower is out.
Finally Someone for the power company calls back and says the power hasn't been paid in 18 months. They've been billing to the old shop which is a pile Of rubble because the guy who did the billing died from covid and the kid they hired to organize everything didn't know to process the address change.
So yeah power company disconnected the pensylvania government for unpaid bills and turned off water to 500 people and businesses.
No kidding. I spent 6 hours this week trying to track down who has the contract details on an application we pay $10k a year on because it hasn't been updated in over a decade and has now stopped working.
Well did you find it?
LOLOL, yes! I have a meeting tomorrow with a bunch of people whose names I've never heard before, and I've been here 10 years. The name of the application is literally in their job description, so should finally get me what I need!
and they're not going to have a clue what your talking about probably lol
It's probably going to be "we depreciated that feature because when we sent the question around no one said they needed it!" (it conspicuously never included him or anyone that still works in his department in the distribution)
or, in this case "That's the wrong link! Who gave you that link!?" Where both the contacts on his side and their side are long gone.
I used to work in government. It's crazy.
Some lady goes on maternity leave... It never even occurs to anyone that her duties might need to still be done.
Man, I feel that.
We had someone go out on paternity leave a few months ago, and I got defaulted into leading the team by virtue of seniority, and the whole week was just people asking me about projects and me going "I had no idea that project was even a thing until right now."
Documentation, man. Documentation.
I got invited to take furniture from an office above me that was abandoned because the management company found out the tenant hadn't been paying rent.... for a year.
Happens with old people who pass away and their bills are on direct deposit.
Checks go in, money comes out and no one notices anything is off until the smell and flies come out.
This. People would be shocked if they knew how much internal knowledge of beauracracy and infrastructure in most cities is known by maybe 3-4 people. They might document what they known and who to talk to if they're unavailable; they might not. My spouse works at a hospital and there's honestly 3 people that essentially keep the entire hospital systems network running for the entire region.
Happend in my city. Had been 1 (!) guy only who was repairing the traffic lights and when he retired the municipality wasnt aware that no one else could do his job as he didnt learn it to anyone else. It was pure chaos for a couple of months after that
I work for a power company and we use PG&E as a cautionary tale almost on the level of Enron.
Oh now it makes sense
Yeah fuck PG&E lmao actually fucking scum company
I was at a Sharks game a couple months back and during the partner thank yous, the moment everyone saw PG&E on the Jumbotron, the entire arena erupted into boos. It was so loud you legit couldn’t hear the announcer actually saying the thank you.
Lmao fuck PG&E
PG&E really doesn’t, not even with govt entities do they give a shit. Just straight up middle fingers to anyone and everyone.
PG&E really doesn’t, not even with govt entities do they give a shit. Just straight up middle fingers to anyone and everyone.
Yup. Up to the point of burning down whole towns (Paradise, CA; Santa Rosa ,CA) and people.
PG&E is diabolical and unethical in its entirety. The California Public Utilities Commission and the state need to start regulating these type of practices. It’s gotten to this point because the lack of regulations.
This almost happened to a new public building in the city where I work. The builder stopped paying the electric bill once the project was done but didn’t bother to transfer the account to the city so it went unpaid for several months.
We were hosting an event at the building when the power guy came to put this same kind of notice on the front door.
What happened next? Did you lose power? Did he give you until the event finished?
The notice was that we had like 5 or so days to pay before service was disconnected. I called the Finance Director and he called the power company and sorted it out within the time period so we never lost power at the building.
Varies state to state, but all utility companies in the US are regulated. I work for an electric utility and we have strict guidelines dictating how many notices are sent (and by what means) before we can turn someone's power off. Usually, the notice on the door is the last step (for us, we do it a minimum of 72 hours before shut off, but we also only print the notices and shut off power certain days of the week so usually its closer to 5 days before we shut you off).
Yet internet isn’t considered a utility and, thus, is not regulated. :(
100% should be
Isn't it the responsibility of a new occupant to contact the utility and start an account?
They wanted the power during construction to run compressors and such, so it was lit during painting, etc. It was in their contract to transfer it to our account.
You can't transfer responsibility TO someone, the new occupant needs to accept responsibility. All you can really do is ask to get it out of your name, which causes the smart meter to shut off.
well now you know why its free
was* 😭
I'll take "Things that aren't going to be free anymore" for $200, Alex.
It never was free. Someone, somewhere, is always paying for it.
I would be willing to bet this was a bureaucratic error where it would have been paid had the system for paying it been set up properly. Somewhere, there is a pigeon hole for an employee that left months ago with 50 notices from the electric company in it.
My house had that issue, we rent and the house supposedly had solar. We kept getting notices it wasn't paid, whilst also telling the landlord (company) about the notices. They said basically not to worry about it. Then, one day our electric bill jumped up and I went whelp guess no one pushed the pay for it button.
I am confused. What wasn’t paid for?
Perhaps a solar lease. The company turned off the system when the owner got too far behind on the lease payments, resulting in the electric bill going up since the panels were no longer generating power.
That's an insane concept, leasing a solar system? I knew door-to-door solar was a scam but jeez
Lease is the wrong term. It's a loan where the collateral for the loan is the solar system itself. Thus, if you don't pay the loan back, the solar system is 'revoked.' Since it's expensive to actually remove the system, typically the company than owns the system will just shut it down and then work on collections.
If they never get any payments, eventually the loan company will have the system removed and send the bill for that to the customer as well -- whom they are likely already taking to court by that time.
the solar system is 'revoked.'
This can be catastrophic. Just ask Pluto.
They often call it a lease though because after the term you can buy it out or they take it down and install fresh if you want a new lease.
Bro pay me monthly & I’ll lease you the sun too
PG&E? was this in Stockton?
Stockton is more of a “tap your neighbor’s service before the meter” kind of town.
Why we catching strays over here 😂
Because it's Stockton. You'd be the Bakersfield of NorCal if it wasn't for Redding
My town contracted with the company I work for to install wireless internet and manage it for a large bridge that was repurposed as a walking attraction (and not coincidentally the marina below it.) Didn't actually pay for the internet connection after the first month. It is apparently a major source of complaints. I get an email about it from a different town official about once a month and I'm like dude, your accounting offices have the invoice. I don't know what you want me to do about it, we don't have a magic money tree to pay for the fiber connection ourselves. It's not cheap, it's a multi year agreement, and the contract spells this out.
It is 100% a bureaucratic error. Or the charger hardware was provided for free and nobody bothered to check that the consumptionhad to be paid by someone.
Yeah, it's literally free now; OF CHARGE.
Geddit? Ok I'll see myself out.
Well, shit.
The food court in my local mall has outlets at every table. They no longer work. There is however, a shiny new kiosk in the middle of the food court full of power banks that you can rent for 3 dollars per half hour lol
This is symbolic
I'm surprised they didn't just tap the main line, instead of putting in a meter. I know a few places in my city that have done that. They aren't charging cars though.
My understanding is that power is cheap in the US compared to the UK NZ AU etc. So that sounds like a crap tonne of power.
California electricity is crazy expensive in some locations. $0.70+ per kwh peak rates. (The electric company on the disconnect notice services a good chunk of California)
Damn, I only pay $0.16 per kWh in WV, and it used to be 0.13. No time of use or peak rates either. It is what it is.
Very cheap in many places, though the US is so large and varied that the difference in electricity cost from one location to another can be huge.
Not with PG&E. It’s arguably more expensive than all of those countries with them.
Plus we get to pay top dollar for gas too
Free? Why would they set up a free charger?
There are plenty of them in the towns surrounding us. It encourages people to buy EVs and also generates business for the local spots.
In a lot of places where I live there are free chargers as well, but paid for by the businesses or malls where they're located.
They bring in business. People come in to spend money while they're picking up a dollar or three in electricity for "free".
Sometimes the charger is connected to a parking lot with overhead solar panels. Now, I don’t think the panels are directly tied to the charger, but to the grid. But the charging in theory would not be nearly as expensive.
The idea is you put them in the town center.
So EV drivers come in and while the car is charging you spend money in the town at the local buisnesses.
I have done it plenty of times in places I never would have even visited just because they had a free or cheap charger.
A lot of municipalities will eat the cost of the power to encourage EV use. Some grants for the installation of these require the electricity be free.
Put “free” anything to the public and watch it get abused to hell. I’d be surprised if these weren’t used 24-7 with people poaching the spot day and night to pinch pennies keeping their $60k car topped up.
This happened with the Whole Foods around me. They put up free chargers a few years ago in an attempt to let customers charge while shopping. It ended up just being a few locals parked there all day every day. Eventually the chargers broke and they never replaced them.
The places near me were smarter about it.
The chargers are free for 2 hours then after that they start charging like $5 an hour.
So perfect for people shopping but super expensive if you leave your car all day.
Here they have them all over but they're on private land. If you park on that land for more than than typically 2 or 3 hours then you get a $$$ fine from an automated system, so they don't need any specific rules for the charging time/slots.
Tesco in the uk had free chargers and during the day you couldnt get onto them because nearby office workers would hog them all day whilst they worked.
the car parks did have a 2 hour parking limit on them but because its a civil issue they could never enforce the parking fines.
the only time you could realistically get to them was after 8pm.
eventually they stopped it and started charging - it was quite funny now how no one uses them during the day
This is why we can't have nice things
“Free”? 🤣
PGE is the bane of my exsistance
The only good thing about being a SCE customer is not being a PG&E customer lol.
u aint lying
Gas isn't free, and neither is my home electricity bill. You shouldn't be able to charge your EV for free, and the taxpayers definitely shouldn't have to pay for it either.
It's a shame, but people were abusing the system. They were coming up with great big trash cans and filling them to use at home.
well electricity ain't free for anyone else why should it be free for you?
Where’s my free gas station? Why is the government subsidizing rich people and their expensive electric cars when Joe needs $15 in gas to get to work?
I'm guessing they grossly miscalculated what it would cost them annually.
I work for a trillion dollar bank…..and we almost got our water shut off because they didn’t pay the water bill for 2 months lmao